Re: Mailbox types: MBOX or MH
Could you tell me where you found this information? I spent
a few hours looking for this stuff on the web and came up
empty-handed. I'd like to read that entire section of the GNU
docs.
Bryan
On 17-Oct-99 David Coe wrote:
> Bryan Scaringe <Bryan.Scaringe@computer.org> writes:
>
>> I'd like to create a new mailbox folder. My MUA, XFmail,
>> supports both MH and MBOX style mailboxes. Which is
>> better? Or rather, what are the pros and cons of each?
>> I would like to start using Mohogany, once its a little
>> more stable. Will my choice of mailbox type make any
>> difference to that transition?
>
> Here's what the gnus doc has to say about those two; I
> don't know XFmail, but I assume most of this applies:
>
> ------
> `nnmbox'
> UNIX systems have historically had a single, very common, and well-
> defined format. All messages arrive in a single "spool file", and
> they are delineated by a line whose regular expression matches
> `^From_'. (My notational use of `_' is to indicate a space, to
> make it clear in this instance that this is not the RFC-specified
> `From:' header.) Because Emacs and therefore Gnus emanate
> historically from the Unix environment, it is simplest if one does
> not mess a great deal with the original mailbox format, so if one
> chooses this backend, Gnus' primary activity in getting mail from
> the real spool area to Gnus' preferred directory is simply to copy
> it, with no (appreciable) format change in the process. It is the
> "dumbest" way to move mail into availability in the Gnus
> environment. This makes it fast to move into place, but slow to
> parse, when Gnus has to look at what's where.
>
> `nnmh'
> The Rand MH mail-reading system has been around UNIX systems for a
> very long time; it operates by splitting one's spool file of
> messages into individual files, but with little or no indexing
> support - `nnmh' is considered to be semantically equivalent to
> "`nnml' without active file or overviews". This is arguably the
> worst choice, because one gets the slowness of individual file
> creation married to the slowness of access parsing when learning
> what's new in one's groups.
> ------
>
> So if those are the only two choices, I guess mbox is likely to
> be better if you don't need MH for somehting else.
>
> HTH
>
>
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