Re: An Idea for Gnus

[Scott Gifford]

Randy Yates <yates@ieee.org> writes:

> Michael Widerkrantz <mc@hack.org> writes:
>
>> Randy Yates <yates@ieee.org> writes:
>>
>>> I sometimes like to work at "lightning speed" and don't want to wait
>>> for 30 seconds (or more) for gnus to send a message to the server and
>>> copy the sent message into the sent message folder. It "Sure Would Be
>>> Nice" (TM) if gnus could be made "multitasking"so that message
>>> transmission is done in the background while control of gnus is returned
>>> immediately back to the user. 
>>
>> Do you have to do this in elisp?
>>
>> The standard way is to have a local MTA on your machine do this for
>> you, usually sendmail, exim or postfix. 
>>
>> The usual way to configure them is to use a smarthost for delivery,
>> perhaps with authentication.
>>
>> If you think sendmail, exim or postfix are overkill on your
>> workstation, consider using ssmtp or a similar lightweight mail
>> deliver client.
>
> That's an idea, but the server waiting time is only part of the
> story. Due to the way gnus stores sent mail in one long file, that
> file has grown to be quite large, and now every time I send a mail
> it takes some number of seconds for gnus just to append the sent 
> mail to the end of that file. 
>
> Is there a way to move mail in the sent folder to another folder
> so that a) this file size doesn't affect the sending of new messages
> and b) I still have it available in a gnus-compatible folder for
> searching and reading?

I have my Gnus configured to save sent messages in nnml, which uses
one message per file, and automatically create a new sent mail folder
every year.  This is slightly modified from the "Archived Messages"
info page:

  (setq gnus-message-archive-group
      (concat "nnml:archive." (format-time-string
                           "%Y" (current-time))))

This is fast enough for me, although it seems that one big file would
be faster; it doesn't take any longer to append to a big file than a
small one.

To move your current messages, just create a new group and move the
messages to it.

Hope this helps!

----Scott.