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

[Bill Wohler]

"Brenda J. Butler" <address@hidden> writes:

> Ken, David, Norm,
>
> On 09/20/2013 02:02 PM, address@hidden wrote:
>> Ken Hornstein <address@hidden> writes:
>>>> 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'm a programmer.  I work with plain-text files and plain-text editors
> on the command line.  I used Thunderbird at my new job (four years ago)
> because it was most convenient at the time, but now I want a real mail
> client : -)  Once I'm familiar with nmh, I will probably move to using
> it in emacs.

I am so late to the party that the champagne is long gone and the
bottles have been recycled and reused several times over.

But if you're already a fan of Emacs, you'll find MH-E to your liking.
Try M-x mh-rmail.

See http://mh-e.sourceforge.net/, and link to The MH-E Manual in
particular.

Hope you are still using nmh!

>>>> 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.
>
> Great!
>
>>>> 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 looking at the man page now, I see that it's a bit out of date; for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.
>
> Similar to maildir, maybe.  I'm a bit less familiar with maildir.
>
> Would I be able to read the Thunderbird files and write them out as nmh
> ones?  No point keeping the old format around.
>
>>>> 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.
>
> Ok, fetchmail it is.
>
>> For most purposes, especially to get started, you don't need to know most of
>> what's in mh-mail(5).
>> 
>> It might be added that if you are using a Unix like system, such as Linux, 
>> BSD,
>> Macintosh, or Cgywin, then you can operate on nmh messages just as though 
>> they
>> are Unix files -- which indeed they are -- and using Unix commands such mv, 
>> ls
>> and cp. And you can inspect and modify them using your favorite text editor.
>
> Yep, looking forward to it.
>
> I'm doing this in my spare time (of which I have negative quantities) so
> it will take a while.
>
> Thanks again for your quick, helpful and friendly reponses.

-- 
Bill Wohler <address@hidden> aka <address@hidden>
http://www.newt.com/wohler/
GnuPG ID:610BD9AD