Re: [Nmh-workers] switching from thunderbird to nmh

[Ken Hornstein]

>I'd like to switch to using nmh for email handling.  I've been using
>thunderbird for the last few years.

Great!  Glad to get a new user!  If you don't mind me asking ... how
come you decided to switch?  We get a lot of people going the other way,
so I am curious why you decided to go against the tide.  Not that I'm
complaining!

>I understand the nmh mail format is a little different from mbox format
>or maildir format.  Is there any conversion utility out there?  I've
>searched but only found utilities for people going the other way.

So, it's not obvious ... but the "inc" utility does that.  It will take
a mbox file (or, I belive, a Maildir dropbox if you have a new enough
version) and incorporate it into a nmh folder.

>Alternatively, a pointer to the documentation of what the nmh format
>actually is would be helpful.  I haven't found a concise description
>yet.

The man page mh-mail(5) should describe that.  Basically, each message
is in it's own file, each folder is a directory.  Messages have
filenames that are all numbers.  Each message is pretty much straight
RFC 2822 format, except using Unix newline conventions.  Although
looking at the man page now, I see that it's a bit out of date; for
example, messages nowadays are not limited to 7-bit ASCII in the body.

>Also, I need nmh to get email by imap.  How can I configure that?  Or am
>I supposed to use fetchmail for that?

_If_ your IMAP server also supports POP, inc can incorporate messages
from that.  Otherwise, fetchmail is probably the best solution.

--Ken