Re: mh-rmail in emacs falls over at 10k messages.

[Bill Wohler <wohler@newt.com>]

> I was starting to enjoy using mh-rmail mode in emacs.  It suddenly
> stopped displaying messages, even though it would read them, at
> message 9999 (or there abouts).

  G'day Paul, gruess Robert.

  MH and mh-e can handle the big message numbers just fine, but a
  little configuration is necessary. I just happened to do this
  myself, so I've included the steps below. I'll also be adding this
  information to the next edition of the mh-e manual.

  1. Copy /etc/nmh/scan.default (or a scan format file of your choice)
  to your Mail directory (or directory specified by your Path entry in
  ~/.mh_profile). If you call it scan.format, ensure that you have
  something like the following in ~/.mh_profile:

    scan: -form scan.format

  2. Modify it as in the following diff fragment. See scan(1) and
  mh-format(5):

    -%4(msg)%<(cur)+%| %>%<{replied}-%| %>\
    +%5(msg)%<(cur)+%| %>%<{replied}-%| %>\
  
  3. Now MH can handle the long message numbers. To coerce mh-e to
  handle them too, add the following to ~/.emacs. See
  http://www.ics.uci.edu/~mh/book/mh-e/mh-e_66.html#SEC66.

    ;; Since I've modified the scan line to handle 5-digit message numbers.
    (setq mh-good-msg-regexp  "^.....[^D^]")
    (setq mh-deleted-msg-regexp "^.....D")
    (setq mh-refiled-msg-regexp  "^.....\\^")
    (setq mh-cur-scan-msg-regexp "^.....\\+")
    (setq mh-cmd-note 5)

  Note that I've simply added one dot to the existing regexps.

  With debian-user, consider using a width of 6 (with an additional
  dot in the lisp variables) instead.

  By the way, mh-e is now maintained on SourceForge. Go there
  (https://sourceforge.net/projects/mh-e/) for support, bug reports,
  new releases, and mailing lists.

--
Bill Wohler <wohler@newt.com>  http://www.newt.com/wohler/
Maintainer of comp.mail.mh FAQ and mh-e. Vote Libertarian!
If you're passed on the right, you're in the wrong lane.