From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.emacs.gnus.user/8460 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: "harel barzilai" Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.gnus.user Subject: Learning gnus for email only (Was: Re: Emacs Mailer Options) Date: 31 Dec 2006 23:14:15 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Message-ID: <1167635655.197063.70530@h40g2000cwb.googlegroups.com> References: <1167115181.099537.35020@a3g2000cwd.googlegroups.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" X-Trace: sea.gmane.org 1167637228 27816 80.91.229.12 (1 Jan 2007 07:40:28 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@sea.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 1 Jan 2007 07:40:28 +0000 (UTC) Original-X-From: info-gnus-english-bounces+gegu-info-gnus-english=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Mon Jan 01 08:40:24 2007 Return-path: Envelope-to: gegu-info-gnus-english@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([199.232.76.165]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.50) id 1H1HmR-0007zh-HM for gegu-info-gnus-english@m.gmane.org; Mon, 01 Jan 2007 08:40:23 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1H1HmQ-0001lL-LM for gegu-info-gnus-english@m.gmane.org; Mon, 01 Jan 2007 02:40:22 -0500 Original-Path: shelby.stanford.edu!newsfeed.stanford.edu!postnews.google.com!h40g2000cwb.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail Original-Newsgroups: comp.emacs,gnu.emacs.gnus Original-Lines: 154 Original-NNTP-Posting-Host: 141.149.217.133 Original-X-Trace: posting.google.com 1167635661 22551 127.0.0.1 (1 Jan 2007 07:14:21 GMT) Original-X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Original-NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 1 Jan 2007 07:14:21 +0000 (UTC) User-Agent: G2/1.0 X-HTTP-UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.0.5) Gecko/20060731 Ubuntu/dapper-security Firefox/1.5.0.5,gzip(gfe),gzip(gfe) Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: h40g2000cwb.googlegroups.com; posting-host=141.149.217.133; posting-account=4nbvcQwAAAD_uQjdggUVGc7tqUVw78a7 Original-Xref: shelby.stanford.edu comp.emacs:93503 gnu.emacs.gnus:78644 Original-To: info-gnus-english@gnu.org X-BeenThere: info-gnus-english@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: "Announcements and discussions for GNUS, the GNU Emacs Usenet newsreader \(in English\)" List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Original-Sender: info-gnus-english-bounces+gegu-info-gnus-english=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Errors-To: info-gnus-english-bounces+gegu-info-gnus-english=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.gnus.user:8460 Archived-At: Thanks for all the suggestions in the previous thread "Emacs Maier Options"..I will look into the other options suggested (including rmail antispam), and will add the tutorial url to the gnus.org manu urls I've been reading.. but only so many minutes per day and so far I've invested some good hours into the gnus-as-email reader pathway and it looks workable...and hope a handful of questions here can have at least that solution "up and running" for me..I might be only 3 or so questions away from being able to use gnus for my purposes (I was somewhat relieved to find http://www.cyphertext.net/~gfish/mrd/gnus-overview.html which stated, "To supplement the online Gnus manuals this is a brief overview of the system. The online docs really do have a lot of information, but I had a very hard time getting started with them, especially using Gnus to read mail." so I'm not the only one who has struggled with the online site (gnus.org/manual.html) but alas even "gfish" intro skips some "chapter zero" items) So here goes with the questions.. A brief recap of my situation is at the bottom, skippable if you've read it in my previous posts: but bottom line is I *must* use the ~/Maildir/ directory in my home dir in the shell account I have with dreamhost.com and into which I ssh (via text only terminal program) and from which shell I run emacs.. In the account in question all mail is automatically put into ~/Maildir/ for me (or into new/ etc subdirectories thereof I guess) My questions are.. 1) Am I correct in my impression that I should NOT take the advice from the FAQ that ;; Q4.11 Using Gnus for mail and never news ;; Sam Falkner writes: ;; I'd like to use gnus to do my email at work, without doing usenet news ;; *at all*. ;; ;; Rich Pieri responds: ;; Change your primary select method to your mail backend: ;; ;; (setq gnus-select-method '(nnml "")) ;; (setq gnus-secondary-select-methods nil) since it seems that "nnml" is one of the "backends" and if I want Maildir format for my files, then I'd better not use "nnml" 2) If I correctly understand "6.3.2 Getting Started Reading Mail" (http://gnus.org/manual/gnus_160.html) then the place to put my preferences is ~/.gnus.el and in my case instead of: (setq gnus-secondary-select-methods '((nnml ""))) I'll want to put something like (setq gnus-select-method '(nnmaildir "")) (setq gnus-secondary-select-methods nil) Since 6.3.13.5 "Maildir" (http://gnus.org/manual/gnus_180.html#SEC180) indicates "nnmaildir" is the name for the Maildir format for mail preference. And do I have the correct exact format in the above two lines for my .gnus.el? (I also assume it's ok to M-x byte-compile it and have emacs thus use .gnus.elc?) 3) If I understood correctly, somewhere in the Gnus Manual it said that I can just let gnus read directly from the ~/Maildir/ directory rather than have it make copies, yes? And, since gnus normally makes ~/Mail/ the directory, and since dreamhost.com's setup (which I had better not tinker with, see note at bottom) automatically delivers my incoming email in Maildir format into ~/Maildir/ then what it appears I want and need to do it to tell gnus to change that..I think I've found the answer here " 6.3.4.3 Mail Source Customization" (http://gnus.org/manual/gnus_165.html) ;; mail-source-ignore-errors ;; If non-nil, ignore errors when reading mail from a mail source. ;; ;; mail-source-directory ;; Directory where files (if any) will be stored. The default is ;; '~/Mail/'. At present, the only thing this is used for is to say ;; where the incoming files will be stored if the previous variable ;; is nil. ;; ;; mail-source-incoming-file-prefix ;; Prefix for file name for storing incoming mail. The default is ;; 'Incoming' in which case files will end up with names like ;; 'Incoming30630D_' or 'Incoming298602ZD'. This is really only ;; relevant if mail-source-delete-incoming is nil. So if I follow, then I need to set the mail-source-directory variable to "~/Maildir/" ..And put it into my ~/.gnus.el yes? What is the exact format (I do not speak elisp..). 3b) Lastly here, do I need to worry about the mail-source-incoming-file-prefix? The manual seemed to indicate to just go ahead and let gnus mess with (i.e., change) the individual files where individual mail messages are, in the original "spool" directory rather than have a separate copy..but what if the format gnus uses is different than the format in which the files arrive? For example, using test messages, I see the Maildir spool looks like this: inside the ~/Maildir there are directories.. and inside "new/" the file names look like this: -------------------------------------------------- * /home/user_a/Maildir/new: * used 16 available 988114812 * * drwx------ 2 user_a pg6640 4096 2007-01-01 01:47 . * drwx------ 6 user_a pg6640 4096 2006-12-31 01:32 .. * -rw------- 1 user_a 5090 1849 2006-12-31 01:07 1167545251.23134_0.looneymail-mx1 * -rw------- 1 user_a 5090 1600 2006-12-31 00:51 1167544309.22136_1.looneymail-mx1 -------------------------------------------------- which appears to be a different name scheme than the one gnus uses with it's "incoming" ..no problems will result from using gnus on ~/Maildir with this setup? 4) Once I have the above settled, I can hopefully start reading the mail from my ~/Maildir/ and was wondering, should I then worry about: ;; Subject: Q4.4 What happened to my new mail groups? ;; ;; I got new mail, but I have never seen the groups they should have ;; been placed in. ;; ;; They are probably there, but as zombies. Press 'A z' to list zombie ;; groups, and then subscribe to the groups you want with 'u' This is ;; all documented quite nicely in the user's manual. ;; ;; http://www.faqs.org/faqs/gnus-faq/ Thanks, Harel (Brief Recap of my situation, skippable if you've read it in previous posts: my GNU/linux shell provider dreamhost.com switched to Maildir format from mbox some years ago, making it impossible for me to use rmail..they did a one-time switch to have all my mail be in one 'mbox' format file, so I've been able to read w/rmail..but spam has grown (and grown and..) over these years and dreamhost's built-in antispam works only if I switch to maildir format..(due to dreamhost's rules it's too risky for me to try to install a local antispam at this time) so emacs mail readers which understand maildir format are what I need..trying to learn gnus for just reading mail so I can avoid 20+ spams/day..will look into gnus for usenet later..using google for now) I've used the dreamhost web based panel to create a user "usera" with a separate shell that has the standard setup whereby all email is automatically put into its ~/Maildir/ directory. Once I figure out a workable emacs mail reader that can do this I'll switch over my existing "harel" user/shell account to that as well..