Re: Rmail tips

[Colin Baxter]

>>>>> Ben Hancock <ben@benghancock.com> writes:

    > Colin Baxter <m43cap@yandex.com> writes:
    >> I filter incoming mail by means of procmail and then read the
    >> mailboxes using "rmail-input". This might be too simple for what
    >> you want, of course.

    > This seems like a fine approach and I've tried a similar setup; my
    > issue was that new messages in these inboxes weren't treated as
    > "unseen" by rmail, so it was hard to distinguish new mail.

I was going to write "no, I don't have that problem", but then I thought
that perhaps I do see the same as you except I don't think of it as an
issue.

I don't know if it's possible in rmail to "flag" an email as
unread. There is a variable "rmail-unseen-attr-index" with a default
value of 6. Maybe it's possible to use that, but I've never tried.

In procmail, you can set a log file and have that displayed in
gnus. That way, you can see immediately what email is unread. You will
need promaillog.el from <https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/ProcmailLog>.

I use fetchmail first to bring emails from various external
servers. However, I use fetchmail manually from a shell and so I am able
to see what new emails I have received. I don't fetch emails
automatically. I read the "rmail-file-name" first and then M-x
rmail-input <RET> to navigate to files that I know have new email. All
the files are listed with the latest email in view at the top, and
indeed they are not distinguished by whether they have been previously
read or unread.

Best wishes,

Colin.