From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Eli Zaretskii Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: Re: What are advantages and disadvantages of RMAIL and mh-rmail ? Date: Sat, 28 Sep 2013 12:26:17 +0300 Message-ID: <83zjqxe1qe.fsf@gnu.org> References: <5ili3zuuj0.fsf@fencepost.gnu.org> <878uyoua8b.fsf@nl106-137-194.student.uu.se> <8761tr9ofa.fsf@nl106-137-194.student.uu.se> <87ob7iq5sf.fsf@nl106-137-194.student.uu.se> <87hada9h6z.fsf@nl106-137-194.student.uu.se> <87r4c9yenn.fsf@nl106-137-194.student.uu.se> <874n9563da.fsf@nl106-137-194.student.uu.se> <87had5604d.fsf@nl106-137-194.student.uu.se> <874n95xqwh.fsf@nl106-137-194.student.uu.se> NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1380360413 337 80.91.229.3 (28 Sep 2013 09:26:53 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 28 Sep 2013 09:26:53 +0000 (UTC) To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org Original-X-From: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sat Sep 28 11:26:56 2013 Return-path: Envelope-to: geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([208.118.235.17]) by plane.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1VPqne-0003fe-7G for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Sat, 28 Sep 2013 11:26:54 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:40245 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1VPqnd-00006v-QR for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Sat, 28 Sep 2013 05:26:53 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:44920) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1VPqnP-00005q-2b for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Sat, 28 Sep 2013 05:26:44 -0400 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1VPqnJ-000391-79 for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Sat, 28 Sep 2013 05:26:39 -0400 Original-Received: from mtaout22.012.net.il ([80.179.55.172]:39971) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1VPqnI-00038G-VJ for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Sat, 28 Sep 2013 05:26:33 -0400 Original-Received: from conversion-daemon.a-mtaout22.012.net.il by a-mtaout22.012.net.il (HyperSendmail v2007.08) id <0MTT00000WR03Q00@a-mtaout22.012.net.il> for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Sat, 28 Sep 2013 12:26:23 +0300 (IDT) Original-Received: from HOME-C4E4A596F7 ([87.69.4.28]) by a-mtaout22.012.net.il (HyperSendmail v2007.08) with ESMTPA id <0MTT00M7DWVZWDB0@a-mtaout22.012.net.il> for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Sat, 28 Sep 2013 12:26:23 +0300 (IDT) In-reply-to: <874n95xqwh.fsf@nl106-137-194.student.uu.se> X-012-Sender: halo1@inter.net.il X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: Solaris 10 X-Received-From: 80.179.55.172 X-BeenThere: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.help:93698 Archived-At: > From: Emanuel Berg > Date: Sat, 28 Sep 2013 10:59:33 +0200 > > shell access to the mails (instead of that T-Rex RMAIL file) There's nothing wrong with Rmail in this respect, it's your usage of it that was broken or at least sub-optimal. E.g., I use Rmail for the last 20 years, and don't have any "T-Rex RMAIL file" problem with my mail archives. For the benefit of others who might be misled by your messages, here's how I suggest to avoid too large Rmail files: . Use the 'o' command in Rmail to file messages you want to keep in folders, one folder for each topic. E.g., I have an 'EMACS.rmail' folder for Emacs-related discussions, 'BIDI.rmail' folder for issues related to bidirectional scripts, 'PORTS.rmail' for ports of GNU/Free software to MS-Windows, etc. After I read a message, if I think it's worthy of being archived, I immediately press 'o'. You can customize the value of rmail-output-file-alist to make Emacs guess the best folder for filing a message, by matching it with some regular expressions. If Emacs guesses correctly, you don't even need to type the folder name, just press RET. . Periodically use the 'x' command in Rmail to expunge deleted and filed messages from the inbox file. This keeps the inbox size on disk at bay. I expunge my inbox once a week. . Use the FCC facility to output every message you send to a separate sent-mail folder. . Each Rmail "folder" is actually an mbox file. To keep these files from becoming too large, I rotate them from time to time: FOO.rmail becomes FOO.rmail.NNNN-MMMM, where NNNN-MMMM are the years covered by the file's contents. (The sent-mail folder should probably be rotated at least once a year.) . To look up past discussions in my mail archives, I use the mairix utility, which has an Emacs front end, is very fast when searching the archives, and searches all the folders together, including inbox and the sent-mail folder. My single gripe about mairix is that it only supports the current locale's non-ASCII characters when searching, but if most of your mail archives are in English, that won't be a problem. mairix can also be used from the shell, although I consider this usage sub-optimal, as the best way of formatting the search results is to produce another mbox file, which is then visited by Emacs for reading in Rmail. I realize that Gnus is much more powerful than Rmail, and also supports newsgroups, which Rmail doesn't. But those of you who find Rmail "good enough" should not be fooled into thinking that you cannot organize your mail archives for fast and efficient management and search.