Re: fetching mails in batch mode

[Phillip Lord <phillip.lord@newcastle.ac.uk>]

>>>>> "AR" == Andrea Russo <rastandy@salug.it> writes:

  AR> Phillip Lord <phillip.lord@newcastle.ac.uk> writes:

  >> It will all go horrible wrong if you do this. If you are already
  >> running an Emacs, I presume that you want to read in batch
  >> because emacs hangs while reading?

  AR> Yes, although I actually use fetchmail for mails and leafnode
  AR> for news.  But I'm searching for a solution where I can't manage
  AR> to have these tools installed.

Okay, makes sense.

  >> In which case, you might want to use the gnus-demon instead which
  >> will read in the idle cycle.

  AR> But it'll anyway stop emacs from accepting user input.

Sure. But if it's running in the idle cycle the user is probably not
actually inputting anything. 

I have mine set to read mail every 4-5 minutes. Occasionally, I get to
my mail reader when it's hung, but it's rare for me. 

  >> You might also want to look at the nnmaildir backend which is
  >> supposed to cope with concurrent modification. Never tried it,
  >> although I mean to at some time.

  AR> Interesting. I use it with a remote path
  AR> (`/user@host:/etc..../').  Is this property of coping with
  AR> concurrency valid also for the corresponding gnus backend
  AR> nnmaildir?

I was talking about the nnmaildir backend. I don't know about remote
usage. As I said, I've never actually tried it. But if it can cope
with concurrency, I presume it's not using locking which is hard to
get to work, but is just robust. It should work remotely.

Phil