Re: Recommend an email index tool for Emacs?

[Tim X <timx@nospam.dev.null>]

Leo <sdl.web@gmail.com> writes:

> Hi Xavier,
>
> * Xavier Maillard (2006-12-31 13:29 +0100) said:
>   ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>> It really depends on what tool you are using to read your emails.
>
> Those emails are in Gnus nnml format.
>
> But I really don't understand why an index tool should have knowledge
> about the MUA. Email is a standard format, right?
>

SMTP/ESTMP are standardised, but therre are a number of variations in
how your MUA will store restored files - mbox and mdirs are probably
the most common, but different mail readers often "enhance" or
slightly modify the format. For example, emacs VM has a slightly
modified mbox format, mh-e (mh) is a bit different to maildirs, I
can't remember what rmail's format is.  Consequently, if your mail
 indexing tool is going to be smarter than just a basic grep, it needs
to understand the format and be able to distinguish different
messages, body and header and hopefully know how to display the
message appropriately when you want to look at the results from a
search (i.e. know how to tell your MUA to retrieve a specific message
rather than just open a large mbox etc). 

Tim

-- 
tcross (at) rapttech dot com dot au