Add Maildir support to RMAIL

Add Maildir support to RMAIL

[csh]

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Fellow Emacsites,

I really love the simplicity of reading mail with RMAIL, but most email providers no longer use the mbox format for mail.  Is there any way someone could get RMAIL working with Maildir mailboxes?

The only thing I could find on the matter was a blog entry[1], but the solution did not seem complete.  It was more of a workaround, and I don't know how well it would work day-to-day.

Thanks,
Caleb Herbert

CC: Antoine Kalmbach.

[1]: Kalmbach, Antoine.  "Back to Rmail."  URI: <https://ane.github.io/2020/09/09/rmail.html>.

Re: Add Maildir support to RMAIL

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: csh <csh@bluehome.net>
> Date: Sun, 25 Jul 2021 05:02:04 -0700 (PDT)
> Cc: ane@iki.fi
> 
> I really love the simplicity of reading mail with RMAIL, but most email providers no longer use the mbox format for mail.  Is there any way someone could get RMAIL working with Maildir mailboxes?
> 
> The only thing I could find on the matter was a blog entry[1], but the solution did not seem complete.  It was more of a workaround, and I don't know how well it would work day-to-day.

Would it be possible to lift some code or ideas from Gnus?

Re: Add Maildir support to RMAIL

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Sun, 25 Jul 2021 15:56:36 +0300
> From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>
> Cc: ane@iki.fi, emacs-devel@gnu.org
> 
> > From: csh <csh@bluehome.net>
> > Date: Sun, 25 Jul 2021 05:02:04 -0700 (PDT)
> > Cc: ane@iki.fi
> > 
> > I really love the simplicity of reading mail with RMAIL, but most email providers no longer use the mbox format for mail.  Is there any way someone could get RMAIL working with Maildir mailboxes?
> > 
> > The only thing I could find on the matter was a blog entry[1], but the solution did not seem complete.  It was more of a workaround, and I don't know how well it would work day-to-day.
> 
> Would it be possible to lift some code or ideas from Gnus?

Alternatively, don't GNU Mailutils support Maildir?  If they do, you
could use their 'movemail' instead of the one that comes with Emacs.

Re: Add Maildir support to RMAIL

[csh]

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Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote ..
> Alternatively, don't GNU Mailutils support Maildir?  If they do, you
> could use their 'movemail' instead of the one that comes with Emacs.

I think that is what ane used. Does it work well, or is it just a dirty hack?

What are mailutils called on Fedora? 

[caleb@scruffy ~]$ dnf search mailutils
Last metadata expiration check: 7 days, 4:21:18 ago on Sun Jul 18 04:33:09 2021.
No matches found.
[caleb@scruffy ~]$ 

Re: Add Maildir support to RMAIL

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: csh <csh@bluehome.net>
> Cc: ane@iki.fi, emacs-devel@gnu.org
> Date: Sun, 25 Jul 2021 06:54:56 -0700 (PDT)
> 
> Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote ..
> > Alternatively, don't GNU Mailutils support Maildir?  If they do, you
> > could use their 'movemail' instead of the one that comes with Emacs.
> 
> I think that is what ane used. Does it work well, or is it just a dirty hack?
> 
> What are mailutils called on Fedora? 

What does the below report?

  $ movemail --version

Re: Add Maildir support to RMAIL

[csh]

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Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote ..
>   $ movemail --version

bash: movemail: command not found...

Re: Add Maildir support to RMAIL

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: csh <csh@bluehome.net>
> Cc: ane@iki.fi, emacs-devel@gnu.org
> Date: Sun, 25 Jul 2021 07:18:23 -0700 (PDT)
> 
> Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote ..
> >   $ movemail --version
> 
> bash: movemail: command not found...

Then I guess you should install GNU Mailutils.

Btw, I'm not sure I understand completely what kind of Maildir support
do you need and why.  Your original message said:

> I really love the simplicity of reading mail with RMAIL, but most email providers no longer use the mbox format for mail.

What do you mean by "email providers", and how do you use that to get
your email before reading it in Emacs?

Re: Add Maildir support to RMAIL

[csh]

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Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote ..
> > From: csh <csh@bluehome.net>
> > Cc: ane@iki.fi, emacs-devel@gnu.org
> > Date: Sun, 25 Jul 2021 07:18:23 -0700 (PDT)
> > 
> > Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote ..
> > >   $ movemail --version
> > 
> > bash: movemail: command not found...
> 
> Then I guess you should install GNU Mailutils.

I asked you what the package name was.  I told you that I cannot find it. 

[liveuser@localhost-live ~]$ dnf search mailutils
Last metadata expiration check: 1:44:35 ago on Sun 25 Jul 2021 09:07:46 AM EDT.
No matches found.
[liveuser@localhost-live ~]$ 

> Btw, I'm not sure I understand completely what kind of Maildir support
> do you need and why.  Your original message said:
> 
> > I really love the simplicity of reading mail with RMAIL, but most email providers
> no longer use the mbox format for mail.

My mail is in Maildir format.  It is not in mbox format.

> What do you mean by "email providers", and how do you use that to get
> your email before reading it in Emacs?

I use bluehome.net, which stores mail in Maildir format, but I am sure Google uses 
Maildir format for its inboxes, too.

Right now, I am using the webmail Webmin interface.  Sometimes I use Evolution.  Other
times I use Thunderbird.  I just used OfflineIMAP to fetch all my mail into ~/Mail/ on
my local machine.

Re: Add Maildir support to RMAIL

[tomas]

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On Sun, Jul 25, 2021 at 07:57:49AM -0700, csh wrote:
> Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote ..
> > > From: csh <csh@bluehome.net>
> > > Cc: ane@iki.fi, emacs-devel@gnu.org
> > > Date: Sun, 25 Jul 2021 07:18:23 -0700 (PDT)
> > > 
> > > Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote ..
> > > >   $ movemail --version
> > > 
> > > bash: movemail: command not found...
> > 
> > Then I guess you should install GNU Mailutils.
> 
> I asked you what the package name was.  I told you that I cannot find it. 

Not a Redhat person here, but I'm told that you can do

  rpm -qf /usr/bin/movemail

to find the package carrying it.

[...]

> My mail is in Maildir format.  It is not in mbox format.

That's how they are stored in your computer by whatever program
fetches it from your provider.

> > What do you mean by "email providers", and how do you use that to get
> > your email before reading it in Emacs?
> 
> I use bluehome.net, which stores mail in Maildir format, but I am sure Google uses 
> Maildir format for its inboxes, too.

Nobody knows. Being Google, they will use some funny storage. Who knows,
perhaps Bigtable [2], to better rummage through your mails :)

You fetch the mails from Google using some protocol (e.g. IMAP). How they
end up in your computer depends on the mail client you use.

> Right now, I am using the webmail Webmin interface.  Sometimes I use Evolution.  Other
> times I use Thunderbird.  I just used OfflineIMAP to fetch all my mail into ~/Mail/ on
> my local machine.

Ah, then it's OfflineIMAP who decides how to store them in your computer.
Judging by the Wikipedia page [1] it only wants to do Maildir.

Cheers
 - t

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Re: Add Maildir support to RMAIL

[tomas]

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On Sun, Jul 25, 2021 at 05:55:28PM +0200, tomas@tuxteam.de wrote:

[...]

> Nobody knows. Being Google, they will use some funny storage. Who knows,
> perhaps Bigtable [2], to better rummage through your mails :)

[...]

> Ah, then it's OfflineIMAP who decides how to store them in your computer.
> Judging by the Wikipedia page [1] it only wants to do Maildir.

D'oh. The links

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OfflineIMAP
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bigtable

 - t

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Re: Add Maildir support to RMAIL

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: csh <csh@bluehome.net>
> Cc: ane@iki.fi, emacs-devel@gnu.org
> Date: Sun, 25 Jul 2021 07:57:49 -0700 (PDT)
> 
> > > bash: movemail: command not found...
> > 
> > Then I guess you should install GNU Mailutils.
> 
> I asked you what the package name was.  I told you that I cannot find it. 
> 
> [liveuser@localhost-live ~]$ dnf search mailutils
> Last metadata expiration check: 1:44:35 ago on Sun 25 Jul 2021 09:07:46 AM EDT.
> No matches found.

Strange.  I don't know much about that, but if worse comes to worst,
you could download the source tarball and build it yourself, perhaps?

> > Btw, I'm not sure I understand completely what kind of Maildir support
> > do you need and why.  Your original message said:
> > 
> > > I really love the simplicity of reading mail with RMAIL, but most email providers
> > no longer use the mbox format for mail.
> 
> My mail is in Maildir format.  It is not in mbox format.
> 
> > What do you mean by "email providers", and how do you use that to get
> > your email before reading it in Emacs?
> 
> I use bluehome.net, which stores mail in Maildir format, but I am sure Google uses 
> Maildir format for its inboxes, too.
> 
> Right now, I am using the webmail Webmin interface.  Sometimes I use Evolution.  Other
> times I use Thunderbird.  I just used OfflineIMAP to fetch all my mail into ~/Mail/ on
> my local machine.

So you use those to deliver email to your local machine, and the email
is delivered in Maildir format?  Then I think it would make sense for
you to try to install Mailutils, because its 'movemail' command could
fetch email for you and save it in mbox format that Rmail cane read.

Re: Add Maildir support to RMAIL

[Tim Cross]

csh <csh@bluehome.net> writes:

> Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote ..
>> > From: csh <csh@bluehome.net>
>> > Cc: ane@iki.fi, emacs-devel@gnu.org
>> > Date: Sun, 25 Jul 2021 07:18:23 -0700 (PDT)
>> > 
>> > Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote ..
>> > >   $ movemail --version
>> > 
>> > bash: movemail: command not found...
>> 
>> Then I guess you should install GNU Mailutils.
>
> I asked you what the package name was.  I told you that I cannot find it. 
>
> [liveuser@localhost-live ~]$ dnf search mailutils
> Last metadata expiration check: 1:44:35 ago on Sun 25 Jul 2021 09:07:46 AM EDT.
> No matches found.
> [liveuser@localhost-live ~]$ 
>
>> Btw, I'm not sure I understand completely what kind of Maildir support
>> do you need and why.  Your original message said:
>> 
>> > I really love the simplicity of reading mail with RMAIL, but most email providers
>> no longer use the mbox format for mail.
>
> My mail is in Maildir format.  It is not in mbox format.
>
>> What do you mean by "email providers", and how do you use that to get
>> your email before reading it in Emacs?
>
> I use bluehome.net, which stores mail in Maildir format, but I am sure Google uses 
> Maildir format for its inboxes, too.
>
> Right now, I am using the webmail Webmin interface.  Sometimes I use Evolution.  Other
> times I use Thunderbird.  I just used OfflineIMAP to fetch all my mail into ~/Mail/ on
> my local machine.

I think you have some conceptual confusion regarding how all of this
works.

How your email provider (e.g. google) stores messages is irrelevant. You
retrieve messages from your provider via imap (or possibly pop3), which
is a protocol that sits at a higher level than storage - it does not
know or care about how the messages are stored. It simply retrieves the
message and passes it through to your imap client.

In your case, your imap client is OfflineIMAP, which I believe stores the
messages using maildir format. There are of course many other similar
programs (I use mbsync). There are also a number of other alternatives,
using things like procmail, local mail servers, local imap servers and
many other options.

All that really matters is that the messages are stored in a format that
your mail reading client can understand. It has been decades since I
used Rmail, but from memory, it used its own internal format for storing
messages - it use to be that rmail would read the messages from the
traditional mbox format on local system and move them into rmail's
preferred format. Other clients did similar - for example, VM. In the
past, I use to use fetchmail and procmail to retrieve messages via imap,
run them through procmail to filter and sort, write them to mbox files
which VM would then read in and store locally in VM's own format.

These days, I use mu4e and mbsync. My messages are stored in maildir
format and I have the power of 'mu' to search/manipulate them and the
ease of mu4e for reading. The nice thing about mu4e is that it uses
Emacs' standard message mode for composing messages and Gnus' for
displaying/rendering messages (but without the overhead/confusion of a
Gnus interface). Another 'simple' mail interface which is quite popular
is 'notmuch', which I've not used, but I believe is based on similar
principals i.e. small utilities which are combined together with a nice
interface wrapper written in Emacs lisp.

The only time when you really need to worry about what storage format
your email client uses is when it comes to sorting out backups or
perhaps fixing data corruption. The maildir architecture became popular
because mbox was seen as a bit inefficient and fragile (large files
where any corruption would make all messages unavailable) or when using
multiple clients.

I think it is a bad idea to try and share the same data across clients.
I've found that even when a client claims to use maildir format, there
can be some subtle differences in implementation which can affect how
reliable the storage is. These days, with cheap storage and fast
networks, I find it better to setup all clients to have their own local
store and just use imap to keep things synchronised. Now I can read
messages from numerous different clients on different platforms and
everything is 'in sync'.

Re: Add Maildir support to RMAIL

[Jean Louis]

* Tim Cross <theophilusx@gmail.com> [2021-07-26 05:01]:
> How your email provider (e.g. google) stores messages is irrelevant. You
> retrieve messages from your provider via imap (or possibly pop3), which
> is a protocol that sits at a higher level than storage - it does not
> know or care about how the messages are stored. It simply retrieves the
> message and passes it through to your imap client.

That is right in most cases.

Though MTA on the remote server may store messages in Maildir
format. That allows also tools like scp or rsync to be used to move
remote Maildirs to local computer.

> These days, I use mu4e and mbsync. My messages are stored in maildir
> format and I have the power of 'mu' to search/manipulate them and the
> ease of mu4e for reading.

The `mu' indexer is great, and `mu4e' is using the `mu' indexer, and
not directly Maildir format. it is "via" that helps in finding emails
like a search engine, but does not really help handling and reading
and manipulating Maildir format.

> The nice thing about mu4e is that it uses Emacs' standard message
> mode for composing messages and Gnus' for displaying/rendering
> messages (but without the overhead/confusion of a Gnus
> interface).

One bad thing is that mu4e cannot handle number of Maildirs when it
comes to 50000 conversations, it will never complete the list of
Maildirs. I have alerted author longer time ago, though it does not
help. 

> Another 'simple' mail interface which is quite popular is 'notmuch',
> which I've not used, but I believe is based on similar principals
> i.e. small utilities which are combined together with a nice
> interface wrapper written in Emacs lisp.

It is way slower on my x86_64 GNU/Linux system than `mu', or it may
never even finish the indexing process. It needs probably 5 times
longer time to index 50000+ Maildirs than `mu' indexer.

> The only time when you really need to worry about what storage format
> your email client uses is when it comes to sorting out backups or
> perhaps fixing data corruption. The maildir architecture became popular
> because mbox was seen as a bit inefficient and fragile (large files
> where any corruption  make all messages unavailable) or when using
> multiple clients.

Nothing changed in that regard. Mbox system did not improve over the
Maildir system.

Using maildir format by D.J. Bernstein
http://cr.yp.to/proto/maildir.html

Quote:

Why should I use maildir?

Two words: no locks. An MUA can read and delete messages while new
mail is being delivered: each message is stored in a separate file
with a unique name, so it isn't affected by operations on other
messages. An MUA doesn't have to worry about partially delivered mail:
each message is safely written to disk in the tmp subdirectory before
it is moved to new. The maildir format is reliable even over NFS.

> I think it is a bad idea to try and share the same data across clients.
> I've found that even when a client claims to use maildir format, there
> can be some subtle differences in implementation which can affect how
> reliable the storage is.

Various software is free by the Maildir specification to expand on it,
but Maildir still remains readable and manageable by Maildir
clients. If you have particular software that is not compatible to
Maildir but is expected to be, let me know.

-- 
Jean

Take action in Free Software Foundation campaigns:
https://www.fsf.org/campaigns

In support of Richard M. Stallman
https://stallmansupport.org/

Re: Add Maildir support to RMAIL

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Tim Cross <theophilusx@gmail.com>
> Date: Mon, 26 Jul 2021 11:26:21 +1000
> 
> It has been decades since I used Rmail, but from memory, it used its
> own internal format for storing messages - it use to be that rmail
> would read the messages from the traditional mbox format on local
> system and move them into rmail's preferred format.

FTR, that stopped being so long ago.  Rmail nowadays uses the mbox
format to store its messages, so no conversion to any private format
(called BABYL, btw) is needed these days.

Re: Add Maildir support to RMAIL

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

Rmail no longer uss Babyl files to store mail.  They are obsolete.
Since many years ago, it stores mail in mbox-format files.

For upward compatibility, if you ask Rmail to do anything with a Babyl
file, it will convert that to an mbox file.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman (https://stallman.org)
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)

Re: Add Maildir support to RMAIL

[Jean Louis]

* Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> [2021-07-25 16:09]:
> Alternatively, don't GNU Mailutils support Maildir?  If they do, you
> could use their 'movemail' instead of the one that comes with Emacs.

GNU Mailutils support well Maildirs, I guess it is possible to convert
Maildir to Mbox and vice versa by using GNU Mailutils.

For example, emails sent from Emacs I am converting from Mbox type to
Maildir, here is bash function:

function save-maildir-by-to () {
    sieve -f /home/admin/Maildir/Sent.mbox.2020 "/home/data1/protected/Programming/System Administration/sieve/save-by-to.sieve" && echo Sieve DONE.
}

and here is the sieve script:

/home/data1/protected/Programming/System Administration/sieve/save-by-to.sieve:

require [ "fileinto", "variables" ];
if address :matches [ "to" ] "*" {
  set "recipient" :lower "${1}";
  fileinto "~/Maildir/${recipient}";
            }

I am using `movemail' all the time though more for moving it from IMAP
to local Maildir.

Maildir has benefits over other messaging systems, so converting from
Maildir to Mbox is not an option for Maildir users.


Jean Louis

GNU Support - installations, support, advice, help
https://GNU.Support

GNU Social Network: https://gnusocial.club
GNU Social Network on Pleroma: https://pleroma.gnusocial.club

Re: Add Maildir support to RMAIL

[Antoine Kalmbach]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

> Alternatively, don't GNU Mailutils support Maildir?  If they do, you
> could use their 'movemail' instead of the one that comes with Emacs.
>

This is how I use Rmail, by using Maildir and GNU Mailutils. Rmail
supports Maildir just fine if one installs GNU Mailutils, it will
automatically do this if you configure an inbox using 'maildir://...'
and you have GNU Mailutils installed.

-- 
Antoine Kalmbach

Re: Add Maildir support to RMAIL

[Jean Louis]

* Antoine Kalmbach <ane@iki.fi> [2021-07-26 12:36]:
> Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:
> 
> > Alternatively, don't GNU Mailutils support Maildir?  If they do, you
> > could use their 'movemail' instead of the one that comes with Emacs.
> >
> 
> This is how I use Rmail, by using Maildir and GNU Mailutils. Rmail
> supports Maildir just fine if one installs GNU Mailutils, it will
> automatically do this if you configure an inbox using 'maildir://...'
> and you have GNU Mailutils installed.

Maybe you think it will support mbox after conversion from Maildir.

Maildir has directory structure:

~/Maildir/my-folder-1/tmp
~/Maildir/my-folder-1/cur
~/Maildir/my-folder-1/new

~/Maildir/my-folder-2/tmp
~/Maildir/my-folder-2/cur
~/Maildir/my-folder-2/new

and I see no trace in RMAIL library to support that directory
structure.

This library supports maildir:

;; Author: Nic Ferrier <nferrier@ferrier.me.uk>
;; Url: http://github.com/nicferrier/emacs-maildir

What would mean "supporting Maildir"?

- detecting if directory is Maildir directory;

(defun cf-dir-is-maildir-p (dir)
  "Verifies if the directory is maildir"
  (let* ((main-dir-p (file-directory-p dir))
	 (new (concat dir "/new"))
	 (new-dir (file-directory-p new))
	 (tmp (concat dir "/tmp"))
	 (tmp-dir (file-directory-p tmp))
	 (cur (concat dir "/cur"))
	 (cur-dir (file-directory-p cur)))
    (if (and main-dir-p new-dir tmp-dir cur-dir) t nil)))

- being able to generate file names according to Maildir
  specifications, and store messages

- to delete messages, to copy messages from one Maildir to other, and
  possibly to other formats; minor functions;

- to list messages in Maildir, provide threading if possible, this is
  probably largest part; tabulated-list-mode would be good option for this;

- to compose (built-in) while making sure that message is stored into
  Maildir, that could involve some adjustments to mail- and message- modes
  

-- 
Jean

Take action in Free Software Foundation campaigns:
https://www.fsf.org/campaigns

In support of Richard M. Stallman
https://stallmansupport.org/

Re: Add Maildir support to RMAIL

[Antoine Kalmbach]

Jean Louis <bugs@gnu.support> writes:

>
> Maybe you think it will support mbox after conversion from Maildir.
>

No conversion needed. Rmail uses movemail to move files from your inbox
to the Rmail file, and if the GNU Mailutils version of it is installed,
it will use that. The GNU version of movemail supports maildir out of
the box[0].

What I do beforehand is sync an IMAP folder using offlineimap into a
local maildir file, which is then read by Rmail using movemail, as
detailed in the originally linked page.

[0] https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Movemail.html

-- 
Antoine Kalmbach

Re: Add Maildir support to RMAIL

[Jean Louis]

* Antoine Kalmbach <ane@iki.fi> [2021-07-26 13:59]:
> Jean Louis <bugs@gnu.support> writes:
> 
> >
> > Maybe you think it will support mbox after conversion from Maildir.
> >
> 
> No conversion needed. Rmail uses movemail to move files from your inbox
> to the Rmail file, and if the GNU Mailutils version of it is installed,
> it will use that. The GNU version of movemail supports maildir out of
> the box[0].

So if files are moved from inbox to Rmail file, that means it is Rmail
format, whatever it is, and not Maildir.

I know that movemail supports everything.

That does not make RMAIL use Maildirs.

> What I do beforehand is sync an IMAP folder using offlineimap into a
> local maildir file, which is then read by Rmail using movemail, as
> detailed in the originally linked page.
> 
> [0]
> https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Movemail.html

Sure you can, but that means it is converting Maildir, RMAIL does not
read Maildirs.

Maildirs are supposed to be same, message file names are not much
changed, and email clients are often having internal indexes to such
messages as file names. So if there are conversions it is not Maildir
usage, it is hybrid usage.

-- 
Jean

Take action in Free Software Foundation campaigns:
https://www.fsf.org/campaigns

In support of Richard M. Stallman
https://stallmansupport.org/

Re: Add Maildir support to RMAIL

[csh]

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Antoine Kalmbach <ane@iki.fi> wrote ..
> This is how I use Rmail, by using Maildir and GNU Mailutils. Rmail
> supports Maildir just fine if one installs GNU Mailutils, it will
> automatically do this if you configure an inbox using 'maildir://...'
> and you have GNU Mailutils installed.

Could you write an article on how to set that up?
<https://ane.github.io/2020/09/09/rmail.html> doesn't say how.

Re: Add Maildir support to RMAIL

[Antoine Kalmbach]

csh <csh@bluehome.net> writes:

> Could you write an article on how to set that up?
> <https://ane.github.io/2020/09/09/rmail.html> doesn't say how.

Well, it would be a really short one, but I might at some point.  Thanks
for the request.  In the meantime, if you install OfflineIMAP (or its
alternative, mbsync[0]) it should place a template configuration where
you only need to change standard things like the host of your email
server, username, password, and so on.  Then you will be syncing your
mail to some local folder like ~/imap.  Then all you need to set is

(setq rmail-primary-inbox-list '("maildir:///home/you/imap/INBOX"))

and make sure GNU Mailutils is installed.  That's it, Rmail takes care of
the rest.  You'll need to set up a cronjob to run your syncing utility
regularly.  Futhermore, I recommend reading the Rmail manual about remote
inboxes[1].

[0] https://isync.sourceforge.io/mbsync.html
[1] https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Rmail-Inbox.html

-- 
Antoine Kalmbach

Re: Add Maildir support to RMAIL

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > Could you write an article on how to set that up?
  > <https://ane.github.io/2020/09/09/rmail.html> doesn't say how.

I urge whoever publishes an article about this to post it in
some place other than github.

We could include it in Emacs -- why not?


-- 
Dr Richard Stallman (https://stallman.org)
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)

Re: Add Maildir support to RMAIL

[Yuri Khan]

On Wed, 28 Jul 2021 at 08:02, Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> wrote:

>   > Could you write an article on how to set that up?
>   > <https://ane.github.io/2020/09/09/rmail.html> doesn't say how.
>
> I urge whoever publishes an article about this to post it in
> some place other than github.

Github.com and github.io are different things, and your reasons to
urge people to avoid Github.com do not necessarily apply to github.io.
Specifically, I’m referring to the fact that whichever Javascript is
served from github.io, is controlled by the author of subsite.

Re: Add Maildir support to RMAIL

[csh]

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Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote ..
> Would it be possible to lift some code or ideas from Gnus?

Maybe, but Gnus is the opposite of what I want. Its interface is too
overwhelming for me to use, and it frequently makes Emacs lock up.  Not
something I want for a common task like email.

Plus, I absolutely love "C-x m" or whatever the default mail composition
buffer/mode is called.

Re: Add Maildir support to RMAIL

[Philip Kaludercic]

csh <csh@bluehome.net> writes:

> Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote ..
>> Would it be possible to lift some code or ideas from Gnus?
>
> Maybe, but Gnus is the opposite of what I want. Its interface is too
> overwhelming for me to use, and it frequently makes Emacs lock up.  Not
> something I want for a common task like email.
>
> Plus, I absolutely love "C-x m" or whatever the default mail composition
> buffer/mode is called.

It is either mail-mode or message-mode.

-- 
	Philip Kaludercic

Re: Add Maildir support to RMAIL

[Eric Abrahamsen]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

>> From: csh <csh@bluehome.net>
>> Date: Sun, 25 Jul 2021 05:02:04 -0700 (PDT)
>> Cc: ane@iki.fi
>> 
>> I really love the simplicity of reading mail with RMAIL, but most
>> email providers no longer use the mbox format for mail. Is there any
>> way someone could get RMAIL working with Maildir mailboxes?
>> 
>> The only thing I could find on the matter was a blog entry[1], but
>> the solution did not seem complete. It was more of a workaround, and
>> I don't know how well it would work day-to-day.
>
> Would it be possible to lift some code or ideas from Gnus?

FWIW Gnus' maildir support is "weird" and also very Gnus-specific, so
please don't borrow (or even look at) that code.

Re: Add Maildir support to RMAIL

[Paul Jarc]

Eric Abrahamsen <eric@ericabrahamsen.net> wrote:
> FWIW Gnus' maildir support is "weird" and also very Gnus-specific, so
> please don't borrow (or even look at) that code.

As the original author of that code, I agree.

Re: Add Maildir support to RMAIL

[Eric Abrahamsen]

prj@case.edu (Paul Jarc) writes:

> Eric Abrahamsen <eric@ericabrahamsen.net> wrote:
>> FWIW Gnus' maildir support is "weird" and also very Gnus-specific, so
>> please don't borrow (or even look at) that code.
>
> As the original author of that code, I agree.

Thank you for your good humor :)

Re: Add Maildir support to RMAIL

[Jean Louis]

* Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> [2021-07-25 15:57]:

> Would it be possible to lift some code or ideas from Gnus?

Gnus handling of Maildirs has a feature to index it and thus
duplicates mesages unnecessarily. It does not warn user about that
action and thus messes up the file system.


Jean

Take action in Free Software Foundation campaigns:
https://www.fsf.org/campaigns

In support of Richard M. Stallman
https://stallmansupport.org/

Re: Add Maildir support to RMAIL

[Jean Louis]

* csh <csh@bluehome.net> [2021-07-25 15:49]:
> I really love the simplicity of reading mail with RMAIL, but most
> email providers no longer use the mbox format for mail.  Is there
> any way someone could get RMAIL working with Maildir mailboxes?

It does not matter how is email stored at email provider's side as how
already explained by Eli you may use programs like `movemail' or
`imapsync' or `isync' or `fetchmail' to move it from provider to local
computer.

Or are you reading email straight through shell on the remote server?

Though that all does not solve the issue that Emacs does not handle
Maildirs.

There is one attempt to handle maildirs in the library:

;; Author: Nic Ferrier <nferrier@ferrier.me.uk>
;; Url: http://github.com/nicferrier/emacs-maildir

I use that library sometimes, though I consider that library
incomplete.

Due to lack of complete Maildir support in Emacs I am using `mutt'
email client within terminal, that works well. It invokes emacsclient
from Emacs terminal or vterm library.

-- 
Jean

Take action in Free Software Foundation campaigns:
https://www.fsf.org/campaigns

In support of Richard M. Stallman
https://stallmansupport.org/

Re: Add Maildir support to RMAIL

[Philip Kaludercic]

csh <csh@bluehome.net> writes:

> Fellow Emacsites,
>
> I really love the simplicity of reading mail with RMAIL, but most
> email providers no longer use the mbox format for mail.  Is there any
> way someone could get RMAIL working with Maildir mailboxes?

I have thought about this in the past, but I don't think it would be
possible without rewriting RMAIL to a significant degree. RMAIL can be
seen as a major mode for mbox files, and translating that onto Maildir
would probably turn out messy if backwards compatibility is to be
maintained.

It would probably be better to create a new client, that might use Gnus
code, but tries to provide a Rmail-like interface (and not trying to
abstract over all possible news sources, but just limiting itself to
email). I started writing code for a client like this some while ago,
but gave up because Gnus is good enough for me.

> The only thing I could find on the matter was a blog entry[1], but the solution did not seem complete.  It was more of a workaround, and I don't know how well it would work day-to-day.
>
> Thanks,
> Caleb Herbert
>
> CC: Antoine Kalmbach.
>
> [1]: Kalmbach, Antoine.  "Back to Rmail."  URI: <https://ane.github.io/2020/09/09/rmail.html>.
>

-- 
	Philip Kaludercic

Re: Add Maildir support to RMAIL

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: csh <csh@bluehome.net>
> Date: Sun, 25 Jul 2021 06:48:33 -0700 (PDT)
> 
> Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote ..
> > Would it be possible to lift some code or ideas from Gnus?
> 
> I don't know, but Gnus is the opposite of what I want. Its interface overwhelms me, and it is slow.

I didn't suggest to switch to Gnus.  I suggested to look at how Gnus
does it and do something similar in Rmail.  The Maildir support is
low-level functionality, so using it doesn't mean you must use all of
Gnus.

Re: Add Maildir support to RMAIL

[csh]

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How do I get mailutils in Fedora? I don't see it when I do "dnf search mailutils".

Re: Add Maildir support to RMAIL

[Antoine Kalmbach]

csh <csh@bluehome.net> writes:

> How do I get mailutils in Fedora? I don't see it when I do "dnf search
> mailutils".

It appears GNU Mailutils is not packaged for Fedora.  Which means you'll
have to build from source.


-- 
Antoine Kalmbach

Re: Add Maildir support to RMAIL

[csh]

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Antoine Kalmbach <ane@iki.fi> wrote ..

> It appears GNU Mailutils is not packaged for Fedora.  Which means you'll
> have to build from source.

Oh, that's odd. No matter, I'll install it with Guix.