Visiting mbox file temporarily

Visiting mbox file temporarily

[Geoff Kuenning]

I archive my mail in mbox format, and don't have a very good method
for browsing those archives.  It seems to me that the nnmbox package
ought to be able to let me browse them in a read-only mode.  However,
my preliminary feeble experiments haven't been successful, and I don't
have the time to wade through nnmbox.el right now.

First, is it possible (and simple) to point nnmbox at an arbitrary
file?  Second, is it reasonable to use nnmbox for this kind of
browsing?  The interface I'd like is something like:

    M-x nnmbox-visit-file RET ~/mail/archives/foobar RET

at which point I would be in a friendly GNUS interface with a summary
buffer and the ability to wash articles.  I don't mind hacking up a
bit of elisp to provide scaffolding to support this idea.

(Suggestions for alternate archival formats will be appreciated, but
since I have many years of old archives, the above question still
applies.)
-- 
    Geoff Kuenning   geoff@cs.hmc.edu   http://www.cs.hmc.edu/~geoff/

Microsoft's motto: "We Have Worked Out All The Buggs"
	-- Dave Barry

Re: Visiting mbox file temporarily

[Reiner Steib]

On Fri, Nov 17 2006, Geoff Kuenning wrote:

> I archive my mail in mbox format, and don't have a very good method
> for browsing those archives.  It seems to me that the nnmbox package
> ought to be able to let me browse them in a read-only mode.
[...]
> The interface I'd like is something like:
>
>     M-x nnmbox-visit-file RET ~/mail/archives/foobar RET
>
> at which point I would be in a friendly GNUS interface

s/GNUS/Gnus/

> with a summary buffer and the ability to wash articles.  I don't
> mind hacking up a bit of elisp to provide scaffolding to support
> this idea.

Creating an ephemeral group:

`G M some-name RET nndoc RET /path/to/mbox RET'

(gnus-group-read-ephemeral-group
 "some-name" '(nndoc "/path/to/mbox" (nndoc-article-type mbox)))

A foreign group `gnus-group-make-doc-group':

`C-u G f /path/to/mbox m'

Bye, Reiner.
-- 
       ,,,
      (o o)
---ooO-(_)-Ooo---  |  PGP key available  |  http://rsteib.home.pages.de/

Re: Visiting mbox file temporarily

[Geoff Kuenning]

Thanks, Reiner!

> (gnus-group-read-ephemeral-group
>  "some-name" '(nndoc "/path/to/mbox" (nndoc-article-type mbox)))

This one doesn't work for me.  It crashes inside gnus-list-of-unread-articles,
when it tries to do "while (<= first last) ..." and both first and
last are nil.  I haven't yet figured out what I'm doing wrong here.

> `C-u G f /path/to/mbox m'

But this one works like a charm.  I don't even need the C-u because
nndoc defaults the type to "guess".  There's a minor nuisance in that
I have to kill the group after I visit it, but that's not a big deal.

Thanks again for the help.
-- 
    Geoff Kuenning   geoff@cs.hmc.edu   http://www.cs.hmc.edu/~geoff/

Perl is awk with skin cancer.
		-- Henry Spencer

Re: Visiting mbox file temporarily

[Reiner Steib]

On Fri, Nov 17 2006, Geoff Kuenning wrote:

>> (gnus-group-read-ephemeral-group
>>  "some-name" '(nndoc "/path/to/mbox" (nndoc-article-type mbox)))
>
> This one doesn't work for me.  It crashes inside gnus-list-of-unread-articles,
> when it tries to do "while (<= first last) ..." and both first and
> last are nil.  I haven't yet figured out what I'm doing wrong here.

I can't reproduce this.  `gnus-list-of-unread-articles' has been
changed since Gnus 5.9 (which is quite old).  Currently, the end of
`gnus-list-of-unread-articles' reads:

    ;; And add the last unread articles.
    (while (<= first last)
      (setq unread (cons first unread)
            first (1+ first)))
    ;; Return the list of unread articles.
    (delq 0 (nreverse unread))))

If you can reproduce it with a current Gnus version, please report it
as a bug.

>> `C-u G f /path/to/mbox m'
>
> But this one works like a charm.  I don't even need the C-u because
> nndoc defaults the type to "guess".

"guess" sometimes fails, e.g. if the first message is a multipart MIME
message.

> There's a minor nuisance in that I have to kill the group after I
> visit it, but that's not a big deal.

I'd use topics mode an move the group to a collapsed topic.

Bye, Reiner.
-- 
       ,,,
      (o o)
---ooO-(_)-Ooo---  |  PGP key available  |  http://rsteib.home.pages.de/