can nnimap be used as a primary select method for GNUS?

can nnimap be used as a primary select method for GNUS?

[Ed]

Howdy all!

I'm using emacs 22.2, gnus 5.11, on a redhat 9 box.

Quick question:

Can nnimap be used as the primary select method? Or must it be a
secondary select method?

I have seen contradictory advice on the web, with some using nnimap as
their primary method, and others setting the primary one to nil and
using nnimap as a secondary select method.

Since I can get mine working either way, I thought I would at least
try and clear up this confusion. ;-)

Thanks!

Ed

Re: can nnimap be used as a primary select method for GNUS?

[Zak B. Elep]

Ed <edwardjameshartnett@gmail.com> writes:

> I have seen contradictory advice on the web, with some using nnimap as
> their primary method, and others setting the primary one to nil and
> using nnimap as a secondary select method.

I was thinking the exact same thing just a week ago, but I decided to go
with getting onto Usenet instead ;) I'm late catching up on the Eternal
September...

-- 
  I like the idea of 256 bits, though: 32 for the (Unicode) character leaves
  room for 224 Bucky bits, which ought to be enough for anyone.
				-- Roland Hutchinson, in alt.folklore.computers

Re: can nnimap be used as a primary select method for GNUS?

[David]

Ed <edwardjameshartnett@gmail.com> writes:
> Can nnimap be used as the primary select method? 

Yes.

-David

Re: can nnimap be used as a primary select method for GNUS?

[Ed]

On Jul 26, 10:34 am, David <de...@arcor.de> wrote:
> Ed <edwardjameshartn...@gmail.com> writes:
> > Can nnimap be used as the primary select method?
>
> Yes.
>
> -David

Here's the section of the GNUS manual that caused my confusion, I
believe:

   If you want to use IMAP as a mail storage protocol, use an nnimap
entry in `gnus-secondary-select-methods'.  With this, Gnus will
manipulate mails stored on the IMAP server.  This is the kind of usage
explained in this section.

Re: can nnimap be used as a primary select method for GNUS?

[David]

Ed <edwardjameshartnett@gmail.com> writes:
> On Jul 26, 10:34 am, David <de...@arcor.de> wrote:
>> Ed <edwardjameshartn...@gmail.com> writes:
>> > Can nnimap be used as the primary select method?
>>
>> Yes.
>
> Here's the section of the GNUS manual that caused my confusion, I
> believe:
>
>    If you want to use IMAP as a mail storage protocol, use an nnimap
> entry in `gnus-secondary-select-methods'.  With this, Gnus will
> manipulate mails stored on the IMAP server.  This is the kind of usage
> explained in this section.

Yes, the manual always uses gnus-select-method for news and
gnus-secondary-select-methods for all the other back ends. I would guess
this is simply for historical reasons, but I don't really know.

I would assume that you can use every back end as a primary or secondary
select method, since for Gnus everything looks like news anyway:

(from the manual, section 10.7.2)
|Gnus doesn't know anything about NNTP, spools, mail or virtual groups.
|It only knows how to talk to "virtual servers".  A virtual server is a
|"back end" and some "back end variables".  As examples of the first, we
|have `nntp', `nnspool' and `nnmbox'.  As examples of the latter we have
|`nntp-port-number' and `nnmbox-directory'.

-David