Re: Recognize mbox files?

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Richard M Stallman writes:

 > I normally use *.xmail for these files.
 > I think others use *.mbox.
 > But the general idea would work.

As long as Rmail munges the file without asking, autodetecting by
filename is a bad idea, because far too many applications use mbox
files as an interchange format, and there's no fixed convention for
naming them, although "mbox" often appears somewhere in the name.  You
could use something unlikely to mean "I'm an mbox file", although that
sorta defeats the purpose.  Eg, something like
"auto-open-me-in-rmail-mode.$SERIAL_NO" would be OK.

A better idea would be for Rmail to detect whether it has already
munged the file (a quick grep for "^X-RMAIL-.*" headers should do) and
if not make the buffer read-only.  When it needs to edit the buffer,
it can ask the user whether that's OK.  That should be the default
(ie, failsafe) behavior.  If you want to have an option to turn off
that protection, it would be OK.

Otherwise, Rmail will have to be considered risky for use by mail
admins.