Re: questions switching from vm to gnus to email

Re: questions switching from vm to gnus to email

[Jesper Harder]

David Rogoff <david@therogoffs.com> writes:

> Next, the never-ending question of backends.  I have about 15 years of
> old email and news save in a directory tree of mbox/rfc822 format
> files.  Should I:
>
> a) keep doing what I have been doing: saving mail/news in mbox format
> and visiting the files from gnus (G D) to look at them later?
>
> b) convert the old stuff into nnfolder. Is there a script to convert a
> large tree of mboxes?  If I convert all the folders, then is there a
> way to access them as a tree from the Group buffer?  The problem I see
> is that my 200 or so folders will appear as one huge, flat,
> unmanagable list.

See the node "Incorporating old mail" in the manual.  The recipe there
assumes that you have set up mail splitting rules.  

If you haven't done that (as it appears from your .gnus), then instead
of respooling in step 5 (`B r'), you can copy (`B c') your old mail to a
new destination.

> Finally (for now), I want to set some groups (my email groups) to
> always show old messages. The Gnus Tutorial I was reading said to use
> gnus-parameters to do this by group name. I don't see this
> variable. Any pointers?

Do `G c' (gnus-group-customize) or `G p'
(gnus-group-edit-group-parameters) on the group from the group buffer.

Re: questions switching from vm to gnus to email

[David Rogoff]

Jesper Harder <harder@myrealbox.com> writes:

> David Rogoff <david@therogoffs.com> writes:
> 
> > Next, the never-ending question of backends.  I have about 15 years of
> > old email and news save in a directory tree of mbox/rfc822 format
> > files.  Should I:
> >
> > a) keep doing what I have been doing: saving mail/news in mbox format
> > and visiting the files from gnus (G D) to look at them later?
> >
> > b) convert the old stuff into nnfolder. Is there a script to convert a
> > large tree of mboxes?  If I convert all the folders, then is there a
> > way to access them as a tree from the Group buffer?  The problem I see
> > is that my 200 or so folders will appear as one huge, flat,
> > unmanagable list.
> 
> See the node "Incorporating old mail" in the manual.  The recipe there
> assumes that you have set up mail splitting rules.  

Splitting is useless for what I'm trying to do. I already have over a
thousand messages sorted into folders. I just want those folders
converted to nnfolders.
> 
> If you haven't done that (as it appears from your .gnus), then instead
> of respooling in step 5 (`B r'), you can copy (`B c') your old mail to a
> new destination.

This is insane: it would take hours to do this for all the folders I
have. Why can't Gnus import a whole directory tree? Even Outlook
Express and Netscape can do this.  Are you telling me that in
infinately powerful emacs/gnus I have to do this manually?

> 
> > Finally (for now), I want to set some groups (my email groups) to
> > always show old messages. The Gnus Tutorial I was reading said to use
> > gnus-parameters to do this by group name. I don't see this
> > variable. Any pointers?
> 
> Do `G c' (gnus-group-customize) or `G p'
> (gnus-group-edit-group-parameters) on the group from the group buffer.

This is still folder by folder.  What I'm trying to do is set
parameters for groups of folders (e.g. all mail folders).

Also, one thing I use all the time in vm (and Agent, in Windows) is
the feature of having several mail/news folders displayed at once. It
looks like Gnus can only have one group buffer and one article buffer
at a time.  Is is really so limited?  I know switching to Gnus for
mail reading takes some attitude adjustment, but I expect it to be
able to do everything other mail readers can do, even takes a
different route to get there.

Thanks for replying,

 David

Re: questions switching from vm to gnus to email

[Jesper Harder]

David Rogoff <david@therogoffs.com> writes:

> Jesper Harder <harder@myrealbox.com> writes:
>
>> If you haven't done that (as it appears from your .gnus), then instead
>> of respooling in step 5 (`B r'), you can copy (`B c') your old mail to a
>> new destination.
>
> This is insane: it would take hours to do this for all the folders I
> have. 

I'm not sure I understand.  Do your mbox files contain an enormous
amount of messages?  On my rather slow machine Gnus can copy around 2000
messages per minute.

If that's the problem, you can just leave them as mbox files.  Just
subscribe to them with `G f'.

> Why can't Gnus import a whole directory tree? Even Outlook Express and
> Netscape can do this.  Are you telling me that in infinately powerful
> emacs/gnus I have to do this manually?

There's no predefined functionality for this, AFAIK.  If you want to
automate it a bit, you could do something like this:

(dolist group '("/path/to/mbox-file1" "/path/to/mbox-file2" ...)
	(gnus-group-make-doc-group group 'mbox))

>> Do `G c' (gnus-group-customize) or `G p'
>> (gnus-group-edit-group-parameters) on the group from the group buffer.
>
> This is still folder by folder.  What I'm trying to do is set
> parameters for groups of folders (e.g. all mail folders).

Use topics-mode and topic paramters.  Groups under a topic inherit
properties from their parent topic.

Topics, subtopics etc. is also the answer to your question about how to
arrange groups in a non-flat structure.

(BTW, `gnus-paramters', which you asked about, does exist in the
development version, but it's not present in Gnus 5.8).