From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Tim X Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: Mail indexing Date: Sun, 15 Oct 2006 18:35:07 +1000 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Message-ID: <87pscugeo4.fsf@lion.rapttech.com.au> NNTP-Posting-Host: main.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: sea.gmane.org 1160901807 7022 80.91.229.2 (15 Oct 2006 08:43:27 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@sea.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 15 Oct 2006 08:43:27 +0000 (UTC) Original-X-From: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sun Oct 15 10:43:26 2006 Return-path: Envelope-to: geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([199.232.76.165]) by ciao.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1GZ1ac-0008Ak-SB for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Sun, 15 Oct 2006 10:43:23 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1GZ1ac-0002iR-3D for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Sun, 15 Oct 2006 04:43:22 -0400 Original-Path: shelby.stanford.edu!newsfeed.stanford.edu!sn-xt-sjc-03!sn-xt-sjc-01!sn-post-sjc-01!supernews.com!corp.supernews.com!not-for-mail Original-Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.help User-Agent: Gnus/5.11 (Gnus v5.11) Emacs/22.0.50 (gnu/linux) Cancel-Lock: sha1:ifPFtgRs+3pLfaIDElr9Sho8FGY= Original-X-Complaints-To: abuse@supernews.com Original-Lines: 67 Original-Xref: shelby.stanford.edu gnu.emacs.help:142428 Original-To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org X-BeenThere: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Original-Sender: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Errors-To: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.help:38049 Archived-At: Some advice requested....... I've been a long time user of Emacs VM for reading my mail and am very happy with it. However, I find the amount of mail I recieve, especially at work, is beginning to become a burden when I need to retrieve an old message or some information, particularly when i can't remember exactly who the message was from or when it was sent. I have been using grepmail, but the amount of mail archives I have is beginning to cause problems with grepmail - particularly with respect to search time - I also have some other users after this functionality and grepmail is a bit cumbersome for some of them. So, my immediate thought was that it was time to look at some of the data indexing and searching tools out there. I started with beagle as I'd heard some good things about it. I've run it for a week or so and have to admit it isn't half bad. However, it seems that it really only supports indexing of evolution style mail files and control files. It won't index VM mail folders. This is a bit frustrating as beagle seems great with other file types. I then thought, OK, I'll find a mail indexing and searching app just for my VM folders and keep beagle for everything else. Not the solution I was hoping for, but workable none the less. This is where I'm running into difficulties. It seems there are quite a few options and I'm hoping to get some guideance from the group - particularly anyone who has gone through this process already. My requirements - 1. Just indexing and searching of VM mail folders. 2. Ideally, the indexing would be automatically updated, similar to beagle. I currently have a bit over 2Gb of mail archives going back about 5 years. Having to re-index every night to update for a few new messages would be annoying and a waste of resources. 3. Searching should support "and", "or" and "not" type modifers. Phrase based search would be nice, but not critical. 4. I would like to be able to exclude files easily (such as vm *.spool files, my procmail log file and backup file etc. 5. Existing integration with emacs which would make jumping to the relevant folder and having it opened by VM would be a time saver 6. I don't want to go down the Java route if it can be avoided. I currently don't run anything else depending on Java and having to maintain a Java environment just to index my mail archives would be irritating (it took me 5 years to get away from Java as a developer and I'm in no hurry to go back!). Currently, I'm wondering about two possibilities Namazu Mairix or possibly a solution to get beagle to work with VM mail folders (or mbox folders genreeally). So far, I've only found nasty hacks which require you to run evolution and click on the new mail folders to have them indexed etc. Any suggestions appreciated. regards, Tim -- tcross (at) rapttech dot com dot au