From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.emacs.gnus.user/2848 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Eric Schwartz Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.gnus.user Subject: Re: Getting starting with gnus for mail Date: Tue, 12 Aug 2003 13:28:07 -0600 Organization: Hardly any Message-ID: References: NNTP-Posting-Host: main.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: sea.gmane.org 1138669130 16557 80.91.229.2 (31 Jan 2006 00:58:50 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@sea.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 31 Jan 2006 00:58:50 +0000 (UTC) Original-X-From: nobody Tue Jan 17 17:31:18 2006 Original-Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.gnus User-Agent: Gnus/5.1002 (Gnus v5.10.2) XEmacs/21.4 (Rational FORTRAN, linux) Cancel-Lock: sha1:M5196RxyWLfSiE3I0ycYNZeBrVI= Original-NNTP-Posting-Host: lart.fc.hp.com Original-X-Trace: usenet01.boi.hp.com 1060718034 15.11.146.31 (12 Aug 2003 13:53:54 -0700) Original-Path: quimby.gnus.org!newsfeed1.e.nsc.no!nsc.no!nextra.com!news01.chello.no!amsnews01.chello.com!news-hub.cableinet.net!blueyonder!newspeer1-gui.server.ntli.net!ntli.net!peer01.cox.net!cox.net!nntp-relay.ihug.net!ihug.co.nz!news.compaq.com!usenet01.boi.hp.com!not-for-mail X-Received-Date: Tue, 12 Aug 2003 21:28:14 MET DST (news01.chello.no) Original-Xref: bridgekeeper.physik.uni-ulm.de gnus-emacs-gnus:2988 Original-Lines: 73 X-Gnus-Article-Number: 2988 Tue Jan 17 17:31:18 2006 Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.gnus.user:2848 Archived-At: Reiner Steib <4.uce.03.r.s@nurfuerspam.de> writes: > I would not recommend to use nnmbox; I'd prefer nnfolder, nnml or > nnmaildir, see (info "(gnus)Comparing Mail Back Ends"). You can copy > or respool (after setting up split methods) messages from an mbox file > to other back ends. Except that I might decide I don't like gnus-for-mail next week, and if I use nnml or some such, then I have to manually move all my archives back into mbox format so I can use something else which does like mbox format. I'm a little curious as to the difference between nnmbox and nnfolder, though: nnfolder looks like the way I'm doing things now, with a main "inbox", and a bunch of mbox files for each mailing list I follow. But nnmbox looks like that too, if you set up mail splitting properly. Or does mail splitting in nnmbox just create some index file that maps message in the global mbox to group ? > (setq gnus-secondary-select-methods '((nnmbox ""))). Thanks, this did the trick. >> For instance, the documentation on backends talks about how you use >> them to get mail, when it seems to me as if the mail-sources >> variable controls how you get mail, and the backends just control >> how it's stored on disk. Does this make sense, or am I just >> woefully confused? > > Makes sense. Which part of the manual confuses you? This part: First, just for terminology, the "back end" is the common word for a low-level access method--a transport, if you will, by which something is acquired. That says, to me, that a back end is meant to acquire email somehow, to transport it from somewhere to somewhere else. If my understanding is correct, the back end doesn't transport anything anywhere; it's the storage format for the mail fetched by whatever function looks at mail-sources. Continuing: The sense is that one's mail has to come from somewhere, and so selection of a suitable back end is required in order to get that mail within spitting distance of Gnus. Again, it talks about back ends as if they had something to do with getting mail off a remote POP or IMAP server which doesn't match my understanding of what they are used for. If I were writing that section, based on my admittedly limited understanding, I'd write something like this: Most email programs have one or two choices of how your mail is stored on disk. Gnus lets you choose from several different physical formats for storing email, called "back ends". Which back end you choose will most likely depend on if you need to access your email through other programs besides Gnus. If you don't have a preference, or aren't sure what that paragraph means, nnml is a good default. I'm not suggesting that necessarily as a patch; I'm just trying to show a way of explaining back ends that focuses on how a user of gnus would likely (IMO, natch) want to understand them. -=Eric -- Come to think of it, there are already a million monkeys on a million typewriters, and Usenet is NOTHING like Shakespeare. -- Blair Houghton.