gnus-summary-save-in-rmail

gnus-summary-save-in-rmail

[Jay Berkenbilt]

(I am not subscribed to emacs-devel.  Please include me on replies.)

In emacs 23, rmail will use mbox format.  Is BABYL format being
deprecated overall?  Does this make the gnus-summary-save-in-rmail
function misnamed since it seems to still write in BABYL format?  Is
this still a suitable default value for gnus-default-article-saver?

Just a thought.  I have 20 years of email saved as monthly gzipped BABYL
files.  I'd been thinking about converting them to mbox format anyway
since it's a much more widely recognized format and a little easier to
work with.  I mostly access my old mail files with gnus rather than
rmail now anyway though.

-- 
Jay Berkenbilt <ejb@ql.org>

Re: gnus-summary-save-in-rmail

[Glenn Morris]

Jay Berkenbilt wrote:

> In emacs 23, rmail will use mbox format. Is BABYL format being
> deprecated overall? 

I would say so. Emacs 23 can't do anything with Babyl files without
converting them to mbox. (You can look at them without saving the
change though.)

> Does this make the gnus-summary-save-in-rmail function misnamed
> since it seems to still write in BABYL format?

I don't think so. It writes "the format used by rmail" rather than
"babyl format". From the doc of gnus-output-to-rmail, which
gnus-summary-save-in-rmail calls:

  In Emacs 22 this writes Babyl format; in Emacs 23 it writes mbox
  unless FILENAME exists and is Babyl format.

> Is this still a suitable default value for gnus-default-article-saver?

It seems a reasonable, backwards compatible default. Gnus likes to
support older Emacs releases.

Re: gnus-summary-save-in-rmail

[Jay Berkenbilt]

Glenn Morris <rgm@gnu.org> wrote:

>> Does this make the gnus-summary-save-in-rmail function misnamed
>> since it seems to still write in BABYL format?
>
> I don't think so. It writes "the format used by rmail" rather than
> "babyl format". From the doc of gnus-output-to-rmail, which
> gnus-summary-save-in-rmail calls:
>
>   In Emacs 22 this writes Babyl format; in Emacs 23 it writes mbox
>   unless FILENAME exists and is Babyl format.

I missed this.  Thanks.  I had only tried appending to an existing file.

--Jay