To: notmuch@notmuchmail.org
From: asjo@koldfront.dk (Adam =?iso-8859-1?Q?Sj=F8gren?=)
Date: Wed, 02 Dec 2009 22:12:28 +0100
Organization: koldfront - analysis & revolution, Copenhagen, Denmark
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On Wed, 02 Dec 2009 12:51:41 -0800, Carl wrote:

> Hrm... still seeing the same inscrutable stuff that I find every time I
> try to read gnus documentation. The "I want to read my mail!" post
> describes "nnml" as "a one-file-one-mail backend" but then the closest
> it gets to how to use it is:

> 	So if you want to go with nnmbox, you can simply say:

> 	(setq gnus-secondary-select-methods '((nnmbox "")))

> 	(The same for the other methods, kind of.)

> And I'm lost. Besides the "kind of", which just makes me uneasy, how
> does it make sense to configure an mbox backend with just an empty
> string? Surely something needs to be told where to find an actual mbox
> file?

It uses its defaults.

I use nnml to store my email (I like the one-file per email, indexed).
To do that, I've simply added:

  ; Get email, and store in nnml:
  (setq gnus-secondary-select-methods '((nnml "")))

to my .gnus. Note that this makes Gnus fetch your email and store it in
nnml-"format" under ~/Mail/

I would expect that setting mail-sources to an empty list will make Gnus
not fetch your email for you.

If you store your maildirs somewhere Gnus doesn't expect, you can
configure the select-method further - see the nnmaildir node in the
manual for instance, you can set 'directory' etc.

> Or is this just selecting a backend for how GNUS should store mail that
> it fetches?

Yes, exactly.

> Is there any hope for someone like me that doesn't want GNUS involved in
> fetching mail, but just wants to use GNUS to read mail files that I have
> in a big hierarchy of directories?

Mail files in what format?

I think the quickest way to do that is using foreign groups (but I've
usually only used that to view mbox and RMAIL-files, maybe configuring a
secondary select method is better with maildir).

(It's "Gnus" by the way - "GNUS" was the predecessor of Gnus).

> I keep feeling there must be a simple document somewhere that explains
> how to do that---but I just can't find it.

Simple and Gnus isn't always compatible :-)


  Best regards,

   Adam

-- 
 "Favours for the ungrateful                                  Adam Sjøgren
  Unqualified & hateful"                                 asjo@koldfront.dk