Re: Using R-mail in Emacs

[Emanuel Berg]

> Gnus has several back ends for mail:
>
>     
> https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/gnus/Comparing-Mail-Back-Ends.html

Ha! Rmail is mentioned in that file, which is
part of Gnus' documentation.

It seems Rmail first used the equivalent of the
Gnus nnbabyl back end (Babyl) and then, i.e.
now, uses the equivalent of the Gnus nnmbox
back end, mbox (or if you prefer it, the other
way around, because Babyl and mbox were there
before Gnus).

OK, so RMS wrote Rmail! I suppose this partly
explains the wierd quote that "Rmail is the
primary Emacs mail-reader." [1]

Anyway:

nnbabyl
    Once upon a time, there was the DEC-10 and
    DEC-20, running operating systems called
    TOPS and related things, and the usual
    (only?) mail reading environment was
    a thing called Babyl. I don't know what
    format was used for mail landing on the
    system, but Babyl had its own internal
    format to which mail was converted,
    primarily involving creating
    a spool-file-like entity with a scheme for
    inserting Babyl-specific headers and status
    bits above the top of each message in the
    file. Rmail was Emacs's first mail reader,
    it was written by Richard Stallman, and
    Stallman came out of that TOPS/Babyl
    environment, so he wrote Rmail to
    understand the mail files folks already had
    in existence. Gnus (and VM, for that
    matter) continue to support this format
    because it's perceived as having some good
    qualities in those mailer-specific
    headers/status bits stuff. Rmail itself
    still exists as well, of course, and is
    still maintained within Emacs. Since Emacs
    23, it uses standard mbox format rather
    than Babyl.
   
    Both of the above forms leave your mail in
    a single file on your file system, and they
    must parse that entire file each time you
    take a look at your mail. [2]

[1] http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2004-09/msg00328.html

[2] 
https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/gnus/Comparing-Mail-Back-Ends.html

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http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573