Re: Problem if "vm-summary-arrow" is not a 2-character-long string

[Uday Reddy]

By the "launchpad version", I mean the trunk or "development version". You
need to access the latest revision, e.g.,

  https://bazaar.launchpad.net/~vm/vm/trunk/revision/1538?start_revid=1538

and you can download the tarball from there.

The only difference between this and a public release is that you have to
run "autoconf" before anything else. This is the step 0 described in the
INSTALL file.

Cheers,
Uday


On Fri, Oct 15, 2021 at 3:33 PM Uday Reddy  wrote:

> alain.coch...@unistra.fr writes:
>
> > It seems like VM tries to reintroduce a 2-character-long string.  For
> > example if I use 4 characters, it becomes like this:
> >
> >  73   alain.coch...@unistra.fr  Mon 11 Oct 2021 18:40  test png
> >74  D R  AmelieMon 11 Oct 2021 19:11  Re: petit
> >
> > NB: using vm-undelete-message does remove the 'D', but does not
> > "unmess" the summary.
>
> Yes, I recall that there was some fontification code contributed by one of
> our users that assumed a fixed length.
>
> I might have fixed it in the Launchpad version, which is pretty much the
> standard version now, even though it hasn't gone through a release.
>
>   http://launchpad.net/vm
>
> Please try it and let me know if you still get the problem.
>
> Cheers,
> Uday
>

Re: Problem if "vm-summary-arrow" is not a 2-character-long string

[Uday Reddy]

alain.coch...@unistra.fr writes:

> It seems like VM tries to reintroduce a 2-character-long string.  For
> example if I use 4 characters, it becomes like this:
>
>  73   alain.coch...@unistra.fr  Mon 11 Oct 2021 18:40  test png
>74  D R  AmelieMon 11 Oct 2021 19:11  Re: petit
>
> NB: using vm-undelete-message does remove the 'D', but does not
> "unmess" the summary.

Yes, I recall that there was some fontification code contributed by one of
our users that assumed a fixed length.

I might have fixed it in the Launchpad version, which is pretty much the
standard version now, even though it hasn't gone through a release.

  http://launchpad.net/vm

Please try it and let me know if you still get the problem.

Cheers,
Uday

Re: Saving vs deleting attachments

[Uday Reddy]

rob...@capuchin.co.uk writes:

> Also easy to do - as my workflow is usually save followed by delete
> attachment. 

If that is your normal workflow then you should set
vm-mime-delete-after-saving to t. Then you don't need an extra delete step
after save.

The manual explains that this is a good thing to do because when you combine
save and delete, you also get a mime/external-body link in your message
which gives you a handle to find the attachment again.

Cheers,
Uday

Re: vm under emacs 27.1

[Uday Reddy]

It is a good idea to compile your configuration files

  M-x byte-compile-file

so that you get to find out what configuration variables are currently
problematic. When the variable name completely disappears after several
years, you will be out of luck. 

Cheers,
Uday

Re: Emacs bug

[Uday Reddy]

Ok, filed a bug report for it:

 https://bugs.launchpad.net/vm/+bug/1867368

This is part of core VM.

Cheers,
Uday

Re: [VM] Moving from VM Was: Time to move to Mutt?

[Uday Reddy]

nongnu@niwas.net writes:

> It's going to die?? NO! I only barely just switched from rmail! :-<

Nice to know that there are users still switching in to VM. Welcome!

> Hey, all my mail is still in 1000 (2000?) Babyl files. I just discovered
> that Python has a pretty much universal email converter:
> https://rg3.name/200711221740.html
> 
> If I'm going to continue to use VM while I can, and if wherever I move
> next, I'm going to stick with emacs, what mailbox format should I be
> starting to move to?

VM handles Babyl files fine. To the best of my memory, no problems arise if
you use both Rmail and VM on the same files (though not at the same time).
But it has been a long time (2-3 decades) since I did anything like that.

See the manual section

  Starting up > Local folders > Folder types

for full information.

Cheers,
Uday

Re: [VM] how to get latest version of VM?

[Uday Reddy]

Please see the web page, 

  http://www.nongnu.org/viewmail/

which also points to the launchpad hosting site.

The latest unofficial release is 8.2.0b, which you can download from
launchpad. If that doesn't work with Emacs 26, you would need to get the
trunk. Please see the README file in the VM distribution for how to get it.
You can also download a tarball from the launchpad.

You haven't said which version you are currently using. If you jump too many
versions at one go, you will likely see surprises. It is best to upgrade one
version at a time.

Cheers,
Uday

PS: By the way, Emacs 26.2 crashed before I was able to send this
message. It is not entirely stable, but a lot better than 26.1.

Re: [VM] Overridding vm's messing with windows

[Uday Reddy]

Robert Marshall writes:

> I use vm's summary mode and most of the time I have a frame with just
> that buffer visible. I've found a minor annoyance is that when I
> vm-get-new-mail and if there is new mail, vm then splits that window,
> and shows the presentation window under it, I have a few new emails that
> I've not read yet (yes I know!!) so the really new ones aren't visible I
> then put the window situation back to what it was and go and find the
> really new ones.

Just catching up with this old email.

How the windows get displayed is controlled by the Frame Configuration. When
you get new mail, VM resets all the frames as per the Frame Configuration
settings. So, if you want a separate window for summary, you probably need
to set `vm-frame-per-summary'.

Cheers,
Uday

Re: [VM] 'This email requires HTML support' from outlook.office365.com

[Uday Reddy]

jcb...@jcbradfield.org writes:

> Usually this means that the message is multipart/alternative, where
> the text/plain part says "This email requires HTML support", instead
> of (as it should) containing a plain text rendition of the text/html
> part.

Yes, that is a good explanation. There is a section in the VM Manual called

3.3.9 MIME multipart/alternative

which explains how to configure VM's handling of multipart/alternative.
Please consult that.

I set my vm-mime-alternative-show-method to 'best-internal. If html support
is available internally (e.g., using emacs-w3m) it gets chosen. Otherwise,
the text/plain version gets chosen.

Cheers,
Uday

Re: [VM] 'This email requires HTML support' from outlook.office365.com

[Uday Reddy]

Language like "This email" is never used by VM. You will need to hunt down
the software that is generating that message.

But if it is indeed a HTML message, you should be able to hit D a couple of
times to get a button, and view it using an external viewer.

Cheers,
Uday

pray...@unimelb.edu.au writes:

> A fairly small number of my email messages turn up like this in my vm
> buffer. Lots of others with html attachments come through fine and the
> mail itself displays fine on other devices. I presume I need to
> convince outlook I really can handle such a message. If that's right,
> does anyone know how to do it? Or does someone know of another cause
> for the problem?
> cheers
> Peter
> 
> 
> -- 
> Peter Rayner
> Clean Air and Urban Landscapes NESP hub 
> room 343 
> School of Earth Sciences, University of Melbourne, 3010, Vic, Australia
> tel: work: +61 (0)3 8344 9708; fax: +61 (0)3 8344 7761 
> mobile +61 402 752 379, skype: petermorag 
> mail-to: pray...@unimelb.edu.au TWITTER: @raynerstrings
> google scholar profile 
> 
> 
> 

Re: [VM] Overridding vm's messing with windows

[Uday Reddy]

s...@capuchin.co.uk writes:

> I looked at vm-frame-per-summary but that isn't what I want. I'm quite
> happy with when *I* type 'space' the summary frame splits but I don't
> like vm deciding to do it for me! Am I missing some other configuration
> variable?

Hi, see the manual section on "Navigating".

Cheers,
Uday

Re: [VM] FCC for sent messages - how to merge into INBOX?

[Uday Reddy]

Hi Daigon,

* As you have discovered, it is not a good idea to FCC into a folder that
  contains other messages.

* I haven't used FCC in a long time. I will have to test it to see if it has
  problems.

* Since you want to see your INBOX and the SENT folder together, a good way
  to do it would be to define a virtual folder (see the manual). Then
  instead of doing M-x vm, you would need to visit the virtual folder for
  your normal reading.

Cheers,
Uday

Re: [VM] deleting messages on imap server

[Uday Reddy]

pray...@unimelb.edu.au writes:

> I have a local cache and can delete things and vm-save-folder no problem.
> Those changes, however, are not communicated to the server.

[Sorry, I am just getting to see this message.]

Your best bet may be to use vm-submit-bug-report so that I can see you
settings. 

> I can confirm that when accessed as vm-primary-inbox via m-x vm
> the value of vm-folder-access-method is nil suggesting it's a local
> folder.
> Should this be 'imap in this context?

Yes, it should be 'imap in the folder buffer (not summary or presentation
buffers). 

Cheers,
Uday

Re: [VM] Any newer releases than 8.2.0b?

[Uday Reddy]

Hi John, 8.2.0b is perfectly stable. The only problem is that you can't use
C-x m without loading VM first.

Cheers,
Uday

John Stoffel writes:

> 
> Hi Uday,
> I've been looking at Launchpade and I see various 8.3.x and 8.4.x
> branches in the repository, and I was wondering what the status is and
> how stable they are?
> 
> I'm asking because I've switched to using only IMAP for my mail, but
> I'm getting really tired of not being able to just hit the 'v' key to
> visit an IMAP folder.
> 
> I'm seriously thinking it's time to just build a keybinding to
> translate VM keys into Mutt commands to get something going here.  I
> really do want to continue to use this reader, it's been *wonderful*
> to use for way to many years.
> 
> Unfortunately, elisp and lisp are not languages I'm ever going to be
> able to hack in.  Just a fact of life.
> 
> Any thoughts?
> John
> 
> 

Re: [VM] vm-url-decode-buffer and UTF-8

[Uday Reddy]

Hi Göran, is this now taken care of by the bug fix you have filed on
Launchpad?

Cheers,
Uday

Göran Uddeborg writes:

> I'm occasionally calling
> 
> emacsclient ... vm-mail-to-mailto-url ...
> 
> from scripts.  It works fine for simple mailto:user@domain URL:s.  But
> if the URL also includes some non-ASCII, e.g. in a subject= argument,
> then this string gets mangled.  More exactly, the UTF-8 encoded
> character in the string gets treated as multiple single characters.
> 
> If I understand things correctly, this boils down to
> vm-url-decode-buffer doing the decoding in that way.  It looks for one
> %XX escape, and does insert-char on the decoded value.  That makes a
> UTF-8 sequence consisting of more than one byte become several
> characters.
> 
> Has anyone else been hit by this or something similar?  And, in
> particular, has anyone any idea how to fix the problem?
> 

Re: [VM] Incorrectly encoded non-ASCII headers

[Uday Reddy]

This is an important issue. As per the existing "standards", all message
headers have to be in ASCII (with other character setes duly encoded).

However, there is an RFC 6532, from February 2012, which is widely expected
to become a standard.

  http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6532

I think Thunderbird is implementing it already. Since Thunderbird is de
facto standard mail client now, more and more senders will end up using
utf-8.

I wonder if people can look through the RFC and figure out what changes we
need to make. Can we just process the entire incoming mail using utf-8?  I
am thinking that, since utf-8 is compatible with ASCII, any old MIME should
still get correctly handled.

Cheers,
Uday


Yeechang Lee writes:

> (Disclaimer: I am on Emacs 23 and VM 8.1.2.)
> 
> I sometimes receive messages in which headers--usually the subject
> line--uses non-ASCII characters without quoting them as per RFC
> 2047. (Wikipedia's article-of-the-day mailing list is a frequent
> offender.)
> 
> I realize the best solution is to have the sender change its ways and
> emit standards-adhering messages, but in the meanwhile, could VM gain
> the ability to assume that the body's encoding style in a message also
> applies to the headers? An alternative would be to assume that headers
> are 8-bit clean unless RFC 2047-style quoting appears. (Can either be
> done on our own with some elisp in the meanwhile, I wonder? I wouldn't
> want the message itself modified; just the presentation buffer.)
> 

Re: [VM] setting high priority for a message

[Uday Reddy]

Fabio Rinaldi writes:

> 
> Dear VM users,
> 
> I read my email at times with a web-based interface (roundcube)
> and at times with VM in emacs. In roundcube I can "flag" a message,
> and I noticed that flagged messages are shown in VM using the face:
> 
> vm-summary-high-priority-face  
> 
> However, I did not find a way to flag or unflag a message in the same
> way in VM. Is this functionality missing? I could not find any mention
> of it in the documentation.

vm-8.2.0b, available on Launchpad (https://launchpad.net/vm), has a function
called `vm-toggle-flag-message' bound to `!'.

I am not sure of the older versions.

Cheers,
Uday

Re: [VM] VM with multiple IMAP accounts/folders

[Uday Reddy]

Hippo Man writes:

> Is all this possible under VM?

Yes, almost.

We don't have folder menu, but `vm-list-imap-folders' can be used to see
what folders are there, with new messages etc. You would probably find it a
bit primitive if you are used to having a good folder view. 

The rest of your feature list is fairly standard. Programming `Reply-To'
addresses etc. are done via a separate package called vm-pcrisis, included
in the release.

Please use the 8.2.0b release from http://launchpad.net/vm.

Cheers,
Uday

Re: [VM] vm & bbdb

[Uday Reddy]

Michael writes:

> I am trying to start vm and I get this error: 
> Required feature 'bbdb-autoloads' was not provided
> 
> Is this a problem with vm or bbdb?
> I am running Debian Testing, vm-8.2.0b, and bbdb v3

Most likely a problem with bbdb or your customizations. VM itself doesn't
know anything about bbdb.

Cheers,
Uday

Re: [VM] Incorrectly encoded non-ASCII headers

[Uday Reddy]

Yeechang Lee writes:

> (Disclaimer: I am on Emacs 23 and VM 8.1.2.)
> 
> I sometimes receive messages in which headers--usually the subject
> line--uses non-ASCII characters without quoting them as per RFC
> 2047. (Wikipedia's article-of-the-day mailing list is a frequent
> offender.)
> 
> I realize the best solution is to have the sender change its ways and
> emit standards-adhering messages, but in the meanwhile, could VM gain
> the ability to assume that the body's encoding style in a message also
> applies to the headers? An alternative would be to assume that headers
> are 8-bit clean unless RFC 2047-style quoting appears. (Can either be
> done on our own with some elisp in the meanwhile, I wonder? I wouldn't
> want the message itself modified; just the presentation buffer.)

What character set are the headers in?

Uday

Re: [VM] VM change in Emacs 24 - leaving mail mode

[Uday Reddy]

Daniel Barrett writes:

> On December 15, 2015, Uday Reddy wrote:
> >> I've noticed a change in VM's behavior since upgrading to Emacs 24.
> >> When I'm composing an email and I run "save-buffer" to a file, the
> >> buffer enters text-mode instead of staying in mail-mode.
> >That might depend on what file name you use for the file, and what your
> >auto-mode setting is for that file name. 
> 
> Thanks Uday. The filename for saving has no extension (for example, "foo").
> 
> I removed this line from my .emacs file:
> 
>   (setq default-major-mode 'text-mode)
> 
> and the bad behavior stopped. However, this line was present for
> earlier versions of Emacs and didn't cause the mode-switching on
> saves.

I can't speak for Emacs. 

The sensible thing to do is to use a file extension for mail messages, e.g.,
"eml" or "ml", and then define the auto-mode for it to be mail-mode.

Cheers,
Uday

Re: [VM] VM change in Emacs 24 - leaving mail mode

[Uday Reddy]

Daniel Barrett writes:

> 
> I've noticed a change in VM's behavior since upgrading to Emacs 24.
> When I'm composing an email and I run "save-buffer" to a file, the
> buffer enters text-mode instead of staying in mail-mode. In previous
> versions of Emacs, the buffer remained in mail-mode even after saving.
> Is there an easy way to prevent this change of mode?

That might depend on what file name you use for the file, and what your
auto-mode setting is for that file name. 

Cheers,
Uday

Re: [VM] VM is awesome (was vm-save-buffer) (Hugo Geir)

[Uday Reddy]

Robert P. Goldman writes:

> Is there any way to have VM open multiple inboxes upon startup?  E.g., I
> have a work IMAP account and a personal IMAP account.  Can I have VM
> start up with both of them open, ideally in different tabs?

You can define little elisp functions to do whatever you want. Here is a
sample function that I use to open the vmrocks account (via a virtual folder
that includes both its INBOX and Sent folders):

(defun vmrocks ()
  (interactive)
  (vm-visit-virtual-folder "vmrocks")
  (vm-get-new-mail))

or you could use more simply

(defun vmrocks ()
  (interactive)
  (vm-visit-imap-folder-other-frame
"imap-ssl:imap.gmail.com:993:INBOX:login:usr.vm.rocks:*")
  )

You can try doing it with multiple visits and see if it works. 

Cheers,
Uday

Re: [VM] Experiences trying to restart using VM

[Uday Reddy]

Robert P. Goldman writes:

> When I first try to start up VM it slurps up years-old caches and grinds
> away forever trying to do something with them. But I wasn't able to
> figure out where these caches live and kill them
> 
> Then when I tried to kill my session and restart, I ended up in a state
> where I was asked to do a vm-recover-folder. I did so.  At this point I
> was prompted for a pathname, and had simply no clue what that pathname
> should be. Maybe prompting should be added to help us find said recovery
> folder?  Otherwise this isn't very helpful.

Oh, I forgot to say, the Crash Recovery section of the manual tells you how
to deal with it.

Cheers,
Uday

Re: [VM] VM is awesome (was vm-save-buffer) (Hugo Geir)

[Uday Reddy]

Kurt Hackenberg writes:

> >You can set `vm-imap-max-message-size' to 0 to avoid loading message bodies.
> 
> So, what, VM still keeps a local disk copy of the folder but puts only
> headers in it?  Which would mean that variable is the maximum size of
> the body, not the whole message?

Indeed. The headers are needed to generaty the summary. So they are always
loaded.

It would be possible to keep only selected header fields necessary for the
summary and refetch the others as needed. But that would need some delicate
programming that I didn't have the stomach for.

Cheers,
Uday

Re: [VM] VM is awesome (was vm-save-buffer) (Hugo Geir)

[Uday Reddy]

Kurt Hackenberg writes:

> >You can set `vm-imap-max-message-size' to 0 to avoid loading message bodies.
> 
> So, what, VM still keeps a local disk copy of the folder but puts only
> headers in it?  Which would mean that variable is the maximum size of
> the body, not the whole message?

Indeed. The headers are needed to generaty the summary. So they are always
loaded.

It would be possible to keep only selected header fields necessary for the
summary and refetch the others as needed. But that would need some delicate
programming that I didn't have the stomach for.

Cheers,
Uday

Re: [VM] VM is awesome (was vm-save-buffer) (Hugo Geir)

[Uday Reddy]

Robert P. Goldman writes:

> I moved to Thunderbird when VM's IMAP interface was very limited.
> 
> I'd like to come back to VM, but have felt like I could not because
> AFAICT it doesn't support my current mode of operation, which involves
> simultaneously keeping open two IMAP inboxes for two different accounts.

This was never a serious problem really. The only reason it wasn't easy to
do earlier was that the VM buffers were named after the IMAP folder name. It
would still be tricky to visit multiple folders with the same name. But for
INBOX, I now name the VM buffers by the IMAP account name. So it works fine.

Please try the version 8.2.0b from the Launchpad site.

Cheers,
Uday

Re: [VM] VM is awesome (was vm-save-buffer)

[Uday Reddy]

John Stoffel writes:

> I think if you just setup a git repository with a beta branch, and
> some stable branches, you'd be just fine.  Release lots of beta
> attempts, but only a few release versions and things will be fine.

VM is currently on a bzr repository on Launchpad. The README file gives
instructions for getting the development versions.

Cheers,
Uday

Re: [VM] VM is awesome (was vm-save-buffer)

[Uday Reddy]

Johan Vromans writes:

> However, when a mail folder gets big (more than 2000 messages or so)
> VM really slows down. With big IMAP folders it becomes painfully slow
> when saving (due to the local cache of 100+Mb) and autosave (or poll?)
> makes Emacs unresponsive for several seconds every couple of minutes.

I don't think the number of messages matters much, but the total size of the
folder make a difference because the entire folder is stored in the main
memory.

You can cut down the size of the folder by using "external messages"
(Section 1.4 of the VM Manual). I let my folders go up to 5000-6000
messages without any problem.

The autosave behaviour may vary between different Emacs versions. On Emacs
24.2, I don't get any pauses at all. My settings are:

(setq large-file-warning-threshold 1)
(setq auto-save-timeout 900); default is 30
(setq auto-save-interval 1000)  ; up from the default of 300

Cheers,
Uday

Re: [VM] VM is awesome (was vm-save-buffer)

[Uday Reddy]

Johan Vromans writes:

> 
> *** Initial load of the IMAP cache often stops after a number of messages:
> 
> Retrieving message 346 (of 1689) from Home:Inbox, 100%... [3 times]
> Retrieval from Home:Inbox signaled: (vm-imap-protocol-error expected
> (BODY[] string) in FETCH response) Retrieving message 346 (of 1689) from
> Home:Inbox, 100%... Updating summary... 
> Parsing messages... done
> Expunging messages in cache... done
> 348 messages, 0 new, 0 unread, 0 deleted
> 
> Hitting 'g' a number of times makes the loading complete.

That looks like your IMAP server was disconnecting.

> *** I somehow lost my colours in the summary buffer.
> 
> *** Very annoying (and dangerous!) change in behavour:
> 
> In the summary window:
> Assume message 1688 is selected (blue).
> Click on message 1681, or move cursor to this message.
> 
> Type 'D' (delete). Message 1688 is marked for deletion.
> 
> In VM version 8.1.2, message 1681 would become selected and marked for
> deletion.

You might need to get rid of old cruft in your .vm file.  In particular, if
you were using `u-vm-color' (a non-standard add-on), you need to get rid of
it and use VM's summary faces. See the NEWS file and make sure that all the
CHANGES are incorporated in your .vm file.

> *** VM 8.2.0b is a prerelease and dates from Dec 27, 2011. It's been
> unmodified for almost 4 years. So it is either rock stable (and should have
> been officially released long ago), or it is dead.
> From the manual: "Version 8.2.0, planned for release in August/September,
> 2010." Really?
> 
> Sorry, but this does not help me regain confidence in VM.

I am only one person maintaining VM, and that limitation is not going to
disappear any time soon. I myself didn't have "confidence" in VM after Kyle
Jones retired. I regained it only after I ensured that I could fix things
myself if things went wrong. So I can understand if people feel nervous
about sticking to VM.

In retrospect, I also see that I have been overly cautious about making
public releases. It has been mostly due to the way Linux distributions
function, allowing users to upgrade to a new version with the click of a
button. But all my prereleases have been perfectly stable (except for one,
which I had to re-release a week later). In retrospect, all the prereleases
could have been public releases.

So, in future, you can expect more frequent public releases. Whether it will
be good or bad is another question.

Cheers,
Uday

[VM] vm-save-buffer

[Uday Reddy]

There are two functions called `vm-save-buffer' and `vm-save-folder'. 

- `vm-save-folder' is the correct one to use. It does more.
- But `vm-save-buffer' is bound to C-x C-s. 

Does anybody `vm-save-buffer' instead of `vm-save-folder'? For what purpose?

There is a proposal to get rid of it (or at least the key binding).

Cheers,
Uday

Re: [VM] vm-next-message weirdness

[Uday Reddy]

Damien Wetzel writes:

 Hello,
 i noticed that when i hit n for vm-next-message i have the end of the
 next message in the preview buffer not the beginning, would someone know how 
 to fix this ?
 Best Regards,
 Damien 

You haven't said which version of VM this is about. 

Please download the latest version of VM from the Launchpad site and see if
it helps.

Cheers,
Uday

Re: [VM] IMAP cache

[Uday Reddy]

Johan Vromans writes:

 With a 60MB imap-cache (1000 messages) my VM slows down to the point of
 becoming unusable.
 
 Is there really no solution?

If you use external messages, 1000 messages work fine.  (See the Starting
Up section in the manual.) It is only beyond 6000 messages or so that I get
to see slow downs.

Cheers,
Uday

Re: [VM] IMAP cache

[Uday Reddy]

Johan Vromans writes:

 With a 60MB imap-cache (1000 messages) my VM slows down to the point of
 becoming unusable.
 
 Is there really no solution?

If you use external messages, 1000 messages work fine.  (See the Starting
Up section in the manual.) It is only beyond 6000 messages or so that I get
to see slow downs.

Cheers,
Uday

Re: [VM] Weird performance issue with a VM folder

[Uday Reddy]

Daniel Barrett writes:

 The old headers at the top of the file were:
 
 X-VM-v5-Data: ([nil nil nil nil nil nil nil nil t nil nil nil nil nil nil nil]
   [17232 Friday 15 February 2013 11:38:17 -0800 Name 
 Lastname name_lastn...@xx.yyy.zz.us nil 317 8th Grade 
 student/parent night XXHS ^From: nil nil 2 nil 8th Grade student/parent 
 night XXHS (number   mark   B  Name Lastname Feb 15  317/17232  
 thread-indent \8th Grade student/parent night XXHS\\n) nil nil nil nil 
 nil nil nil]
   nil)
 X-VM-Summary-Format: %n %*%a %-17.17F %-3.3m %2d %4l/%-5c %I\%s\\n
 X-VM-Labels: nil
 X-VM-VHeader: (Resent- From: Sender: To: Newsgroups: 
 Apparently-To: Cc: Subject: Date:) nil
 X-VM-Last-Modified: (21629 51968 231600 19)
 X-VM-IMAP-Retrieved: nil
 X-VM-POP-Retrieved: nil
 X-VM-Bookmark: 430

I don't see anything suspicious in these headers.  If you still have the old
version of the folder, please try profiling.  Here are some quick notes on
how to do profiling. (More details in the elp.el library file - part of
Emacs distribution.)

* Profiling - elp
  - M-x elp-instrument-package RET vm RET should instrument the whole
package.  (M-x elp-instrument-function and M-x elp-instrument-list or
other ways to set profiling.)
  - M-x elp-set-master sets a master function, whose execution is profiled
and nothing else.  M-x elp-unset-master cancels the master function.
  - M-x elp-results shows the results.
  - M-x elp-reset-all to reset the profiling data
  - M-x elp-restore-all to remove all profiling.

Cheers,
Uday

Re: [VM] Starting with IMAP folder

[Uday Reddy]

Johan Vromans writes:

 Hi,
 
 I want to start up VM with an IMAP folder. However, it seems that
 vm-visit-imap-folder only works when called interactively.
 
 Is there an alternative way to start VM with an IMAP folder?

You can set vm-primary-inbox to an IMAP folder.  You have to use the long
format for the IMAP folder name though.  See the manual for details.

Cheers,
Uday

Re: [VM] Keeping track of the last save-folder name?

[Uday Reddy]

Daniel Barrett writes:

 
 I'm trying to keep track of the last folder name that received a saved
 message, so I can restore it after a save:
 
 (setq default vm-last-save-folder)
 (vm-save-message 'my-other-folder)
 (setq vm-last-save-folder default)

Indeed, as Piet said it is a buffer-local variable that is only set in the
folder buffer (which is called `vm-mail-buffer' for some reason).  So, the
correct way to do this is:

(setq default (with-current-buffer vm-mail-buffer vm-last-save-folder))
(vm-save-message 'my-other-folder)
(with-current-buffer vm-mail-buffer (setq vm-last-save-folder default))

or more simply

(with-current-buffer vm-mail-buffer
  (setq default vm-last-save-folder)
  (vm-save-message 'my-other-folder)
  (setq vm-last-save-folder default))

Cheers,
Uday

Re: [VM] A trash folder for the primary inbox (code review requested)

[Uday Reddy]

Daniel Barrett writes:

 For example, I hard-coded the strings Summary and Presentation -- is
 there a better way to obtain them automatically? Any other tips?

For this older question, note that there are variables `vm-summary-buffer' and
`vm-presentation-buffer', which are set in the folder buffer.

Cheers,
uday

Re: [VM] IMAP protocol error on save after get

[Uday Reddy]

Dear Robert, Is this problem still happening with Emacs 24.4?

Cheers,
Uday

Robert Marshall writes:

 I'm running with a recent build from the emacs devel trunk and since
 I've swapped to this version I'm consistently seeing this error:
 
 vm-imap-protocol-error: IMAP protocol error: No response from the IMAP 
 server
 
 this happens (with an imap folder) if I do a get ('g') followed
 immediately by a save ('S'). If I then save again it works, so it's a
 minor inconvenience rather than a real problem. Is there something
 fragile in folder saving that's likely to be generating this error or is
 it more likely to be an core emacs issue? They are in the midst of the
 latest pretest which will hopefully be the last before the next release:
 has anyone built from that who is also seeing this error?
 
 I haven't seen this problem at all before my move to this emacs build.
 
 Robert
 -- 
 La grenouille songe..dans son château d'eau
 Links and things http://rmstar.blogspot.com/

Re: [VM] vm and [emacs] desktop

[Uday Reddy]

Robert Marshall writes:

 on a restart my vm imap cache files are loaded but they don't
 appear as a VM INBOX
 
 The desktop file entry looks ok
 (desktop-create-buffer 206
   /home/robert/Mail/imap-cache-10fa627ba88db87c673417642ff5d908
   ...)

Well, the IMAP cache files have such ugly names just to dissuade you from
thinking they are just files!  The real file for an IMAP folder is on the
mail server.  So, you should delete the imap-cache buffer that Emacs
recovers and visit the folder in the usual way.

I will think about how to block Emacs from automatically recovering cache
files.

Cheers,
Uday

Re: [VM] bug in mime encoding of cached data

[Uday Reddy]

Julian Bradfield writes:

 When I get mail From: non-ASCII names, whenever the inbox is
 auto-saved, I get errors about invalid encodings; and when I save and
 re-visit the folder, the non-ASCII has been replaced by ~ .

That is bad.  I don't have problems like this on Gnu Emacs.  So, something
must be breaking for XEmacs.

I do get a somewhat related problem that MIMEd subject fields of summary
lines lose all the white space when saved to disk.

 This is because when the folder is saved, the cached message data is
 written out to the X-vm-v5-data header, with non-ASCII data being
 mime-encoded. However, vm-mime-encode-words relies on 

 (defcustom vm-mime-encode-headers-words-regexp  ...)

That is not how it works actually.  See the VM Manual, Internals, Message
Internals (Sec 27.2) under Cached Data.  The strings in the cached-data
vector have text properties that say what encoding, if any, should be used
to convert them to MIMEd ASCII.  The function

  vm-reencode-mime-encoded-words-in-string (vm-mime.el)

does the job of converting.  I see that this function has been there since
Rob F inherited VM from Kyle Jones.  However, there were some bugs in
applying this correctly to the cached-data vector when I inherited VM.  I
fixed them quite some time ago and the fixes should be certainly there in
the trunk version.

If you can send me a message that has the cached-data line corrupted, I will
see what could be going wrong.

Cheers,
Uday

Re: [VM] IMAP protocol errors with large folders

[Uday Reddy]

Matthew Vernon writes:

 If I visit a folder that has a lot of messages that aren't in my local
 IMAP cache (e.g. because I've not looked at it in VM for a while), then
 from time to time the update will stop, and the following error appear
 in *Messages*:
 
 Retrieving message 1700 (of 2873) from hermes:inbox, 100%... [2 times]
 Retrieval from hermes:inbox signaled: (vm-imap-protocol-error expected 
 (BODY[] string) in FETCH response)
 Retrieving message 1700 (of 2873) from hermes:inbox, 100%...

vm-imap-protocol-error always means that the server didn't deliver what it
was supposed to as per the IMAP protocol.  It is harmless because VM expects
such things and protects itself.

If you want to track down what may be happening, please see the bit under
Troubleshooting mail servers under POP and iMAP Folders in the VM
manual.

Cheers,
Uday

Re: [VM] Request for howto select email easily

[Uday Reddy]

Interesting application!  Here are the basic ideas.

 The basic idea would be:
 
 1. Delete all new emails.

You would need to set vm-arrived-message-hook or vm-arrived-messages-hook to
delete the new mail.

 2. Mark all emails from any of the email addresses listed in 

 3. Mark all threads those emails from 2 are in.  Or mark all emails
with the same subject as those found in 2.

You would need to define a virtual folder for the kind of messages you want
to read.  See in particular, the `thread' virtual-selector operator.

vm-mark-messages-by-virtual-folder should allow you to mark these messages.

 4. Un-delete all those emails.

M N u does it.

 5. Clear the marks.

M u does it.

(All this applies to VM 8.2.0b.  Can't say if it works in older versions.)

Cheers,
Uday

[VM] Fiddle with attachment - [Delete]

[Uday Reddy]

When you have attached a file to an outgoing message, you can right click on
it and a menu pops up.  The menu is labelled Fiddle with attachment.

Rob F. seem to have added two functions to this menu called:

  [Delete] and
  [Delete, but keep infos]

He only implemented these functions for xemacs and the fsfemacs version is
marked as TODO in the source code.

So, I am wondering what these menu items do?

- the [Delete] item seems pointless because you can always delete an
attachment by killing the line.

- [Delete, but keep infos] seems to replace it with a new button that says
something like Deleted attachment.  But what is the point of this?

Any objection if I get rid of these?

Cheers,
Uday

Re: [VM] displaying text/html with utf-8 via w3m

[Uday Reddy]

Ralf Fassel writes:

 The umlaut-a has been replaced by a space.  If I run the text manually
 through w3m, the ouput still contains the utf-8 character, just the
 HTML-markup is gone.  But after inserting in the Presentation buffer the
 umlaut is changed to a space.

The first thing to check would be whether it is a problem with Emacs.  What
happens if you put the w3m output in a file and visit it in Emacs?

If it is not a problem with Emacs, then it must be a bug in VM.  Please file
a bug report along with a sample message.

Cheers,
Uday

Re: [VM] MIME encoding/decoding

[Uday Reddy]

John Hein writes:

 We should check the performance of builtin decoding - particularly
 with larger messages on slower machines.  That said, most of the unix
 flavors  cygwin out there now have one or more command line tools to
 en/decode base64 (less prevalent are qp tools) which can take the
 place of the vm versions:

As I said, base64 is now a non-issue because Emacsen have built-in functions
for it.

For Quoted Pritable, you can check performance of the elisp code by setting
qp-decoder-program and qp-encoder-program to nil.

Cheers,
Uday

[VM] MIME encoding/decoding

[Uday Reddy]

VM has traditionally shipped with C programs for MIME encoding/decoding.
Rob F created an entire Unix-like infrastructure (Make files, configure,
autoconf etc.) pretty much to handle just these.  If we get rid of these C
programs, VM can be shipped just like any other emacs library.

Both GNU Emacs and XEmacs now have built-in encoding/decoding functionality
for base64.  So, we can use them.  For the Quoted Printable format,
emacs-lisp seems to be fast enough.  Gnus has been using it for ages and
everybody seems happy with that.

So, I am thinking of getting rid of the C programs for MIME.  Does anybody
see any problem with that?

Cheers,
Uday

(Coming back after a long hibernation)

Re: [VM] Make vm-save-and-expunge-folder use a trash can?

[Uday Reddy]

Rebind the delete key (`d') to the `vm-save-message-to-trash' function
defined here:

http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.viewmail/106

Cheers,
Uday

Daniel Barrett writes:

 
 Hi - I just joined the viewmail-info list today. Been using VM for
 maybe 20 years...?
 
 Anyway, I have a question. The most common mistake I make with VM is
 hitting S (vm-save-and-expunge-folder) too soon, deleting a message
 that I didn't mean to delete. Is there some way to make
 vm-save-and-expunge-folder move messages into a trash folder, rather
 than permanently deleting them, so I can undo my mistake the next time
 it happens?
 
 It would be fine if this worked only for the inbox folder. (My other
 folders I can presumably retrieve from backups. Inbox changes too
 frequently for that.)
 
 Thanks very much.
 
 --
 Dan Barrett
 dbarr...@blazemonger.com
 
 
 

Re: [VM] gmail starred and vm flagged not synchronizing well?

[Uday Reddy]

Concurrent access is always a tricky business.  Please be sure to read
very carefully the section IMAP Synchronization in the VM manual:
  
  Top  Starting Up  POP and IMAP Folders  IMAP Folders

Here are some reasons I can think of, for getting misbehaviour.

1. VM uses manual save.  Most other mail clients use automatic save.  So, VM
doesn't work the same way as the others.  If you are opening two VM sessions
on the same IMAP folder, you need to keep this in mind.

2. Many IMAP servers are buggy.  My own departmental IMAP server often
doesn't do the changes VM asks it to do.  VM has to ask it twice.  (I have
built this into VM because I thought maybe other IMAP servers have
this problem too.)  Sometimes I have to force VM to log out of the IMAP
server for changes to take effect!

You can look at the trace of the IMAP session (with a buffer name like
trace of IMAP session to...) to see if you can detect any misbehaviour.

Cheers,
Uday

et writes:

 Dear all,
 
 I've been using vm together with gmail and with the apple Mail.app for a
 while, flagging messages in one of the three and unflagging in another,
 and things seemed to work very well.  recently I noticed that when I
 un-star a mail in gmail, it is not un-flagged in vm, while it is
 un-flagged in Mail.app.  This used to work in the past.  I wonder if
 this has somehow to do with the fact that I now read my mail in vm on
 both my laptop and desktop...
 
 thanks for any hints, E
 
 
 
 

Re: [VM] Using VM for 19 years, still can't solve iconv: (stdin):21:31: cannot convert

[Uday Reddy]

John Stoffel writes:

 I take exception to this personally.  I try to be active but since I
 have zero elisp skills (and honestly don't want to relearn lisp again
 if I can help it), I can't contribute code to the project.

I don't mean to suggest that those of you that participate in the
viewmail-info mailing list are passive.  But there are somewhere around
600-1000 downloads of VM on the Launchpad web site.  The vast majority of
these users are passive.  Either VM is working perfectly fine for them, or
they are not interested in resolving whatever problems they face.

 I do try to evangelize.  But hey, maybe I need to put my money where
 my mouth is and learn elisp enough so I can submit patches to the
 code.  

I know that elisp skills will be quite limited in the community.  But,
perhaps, somebody can volunteer to create a release from the current trunk
and field the issues that might arise?

Cheers,
Uay

Re: [VM] Using VM for 19 years, still can't solve iconv: (stdin):21:31: cannot convert

[Uday Reddy]

edburns writes:

 Os: SunOS foo 5.10 Generic_144489-05 i86pc i386 i86pc
 Emacs: 21.4 (patch 22) \Instant Classic\ XEmacs Lucid
 vm: 8.0.12-devo-585

If you pick up the current beta version of XEmacs, you probably won't need
iconv.  It will know how to deal with MIME character sets.

vm 8.0.12-devo-585 seems like quite an old unofficial version of VM.  Please
get vm 8.1.12 from the VM home page.

---

There are probably quite a few VM users, but they are generally passive,
just as you have been.  So, we don't hear from them.  VM has had the
appearance of a dying creed because of this lack of participation by the VM
community.  I am not sure if open source projects can survive for very long
without having a band of enthusiastic supporters who carry the flag and
evangelize.

We all have to put in some amount of effort, depending on what we can
afford.  Upgrading your software at least once a year and checking the
mailing list periodically would qualify as the minimum required.

Cheers,
Uday

Re: [VM] sending email with ssl to Verizon server

[Uday Reddy]

Richard J. Frongillo writes:

 My environment:
 
  Windows 7 Home
  GNU Emacs 24.3.1 (i386-mingw-nt6.1.7601) of 2013-03-17 on MARVIN
  VM version is: 8.1.2
  CYGWIN32/NT MYMACHINE 6.1 17.5 i686
  stunnel version 4.56 (from stunnel.org)

VM 8.1.2 was not made for Emacs 24 and so it won't know about Emacs 24
features.  You can get the latest beta-release from
http://launchpad.net/vm.

If you want to stick to 8.1.2, you will need to use stunnel.  Check the old
posts on stunnel in the gnu.emacs.vm.info archive:

  https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/gnu.emacs.vm.info/stunnel

Cheers,
Uday

Re: [VM] trouble starting vm in emacs 23

[Uday Reddy]

Michael writes:

 Running Emacs 23.4.1 on Debian testing. Downloaded bbdb 3 and vm-8.2.0b.
 When trying to start vm with M-x vm, I get the following:
 symbol's value as variable is void: bbdb-define-all-aliases-field

BBDB 3 has not been released yet.  You are welcome to try it, but please be
prepared to struggle.  Otherwise, you are better off sticking to BBDB 2.

My setup for BBDB 3 is as follows:

(require 'bbdb)
(if (locate-library bbdb-loaddefs)
(require 'bbdb-loaddefs 
 (substitute-in-file-name $BBDBDIR/lisp/bbdb-loaddefs.el)))
(bbdb-initialize 'vm)
(setq bbdb-file ~/.bbdb3)

Cheers,
Uday

Re: [VM] Only ellipsis (...) in Folder presenstation

[Uday Reddy]

b...@elektron.ikp.physik.tu-darmstadt.de writes:

 I strippped down my .emacs to the bare minimum for run vm. The behaviour
 persists. I have appended a screenshot of the displayed ellipsis and an
 offending mail folder. Can anybody test if the error is repeatable on other
 systems? 

Might it have something to do with previewing?  What happens if you hit
SPACE?  What is the value of `vm-preview-lines'?

Also, please ask your Linux distributors to get more recent versions of VM,
which can be found at http://www.nongnu.org/viewmail/.

Cheers,
Uday

Re: [VM] Only ellipsis (...) in Folder presenstation

[Uday Reddy]

b...@hertz.ikp.physik.tu-darmstadt.de writes:

 Second observation:
 - Now some messages only display a line with dashes, like
 
 --
 
 See appended screenshot. Please test with the mail folder I sent in
 earlier mail.

I couldn't view the jpg file.  The earlier attachments didn't come through
either.  Probably the mailing list manager is unhappy about them.

Please send a bug report using vm-submit-bug-report.

Cheers,
Uday

Re: [VM] VM-pcrisis and the From header

[Uday Reddy]

Matthew Vernon writes:

 Hi,
 
 I have set up vm-pcrisis to set my From: line based on which account I'm
 replying to emails from (IYSWIM). This seems to mostly work, but there's
 one slight annoyance - setting the from line results in it being the
 last header, whereas I'd rather it was at the top of my mail buffer.

I have always found it to put the From header at the top of the mail buffer.

The preset value of `vm-mail-header-order' has From at the top.  So,
unless you changed the variable, that is where it should be.

Cheers,
Uday

Re: [VM] VM-pcrisis and the From header

[Uday Reddy]

Matthew Vernon writes:

 Ah. If I set vm-mail-header-from and let vm-pcrisis change it, then it
 appears at the top. If I leave vm-mail-header-from as nil, and let
 vm-pcrisis create the header, it ends up at the bottom.

It probably means that VM's header-ordering works before VMPC does its
hacking.  So, if you set the variable to nil, there would have been no
From header when the header-ordering happens.

So, don't set the variable to nil.

VMPC is an add-on.  You can't expect it to be perfect.

Cheers,
Uday

Re: [VM] N Stale messages are ignored

[Uday Reddy]

viewmail-i...@kosowsky.org writes:

 When I run this I get:
(inbox label stale): No messages.
 
 Despite the fact that 'saving' gives me:
492 stale deleted messages are ignored

In my experience, this situation happens only when a transfer from the IMAP
server had to be aborted, either due to network problems or typing Ctrl-G.
In that case, the downloaded messages would not have been properly
initialized.  So, the connection between them and the corresponding messages
on the server would not have been established.  VM knows them because they
have invalid UIDs.  

I just tried this situation with vm-8.2.0b.  When I attempt to save the
folder, VM generates the following dialogue:

  Found 11 messages with invalid UIDs.  Expunge them? (y or n)  n
  They will be labelled 'stale'

Since I answered 'n' to the questin, all those messages got labelled as
stale.  I can view them by doing `V C label stale'.

If I answered 'y' to the question, then those messages would have been
expunged from the cache folder and I would never hear from them again.

If you haven't seen anthing like this, then you should assume that your
cache folder is corrupted and regenerate it.  To delete the cache folder, do
`M-x buffer-menu' and find the entry corresponding to the damaged folder.
The entry should have the full path name of the cache folder.  Do `M-x
delete-file' for that path name.

Next time you visit the IMAP folder, VM will download fresh copies of all
the messages.  If downloading all the messages again would be too
time-consuming, you can use the external messages feature, which is
described in the VM manual.

Cheers,
Uday

Re: [VM] N Stale messages are ignored

[Uday Reddy]

viewmail-i...@kosowsky.org writes:

 I keep getting the above message when I save my Imap folder.

I copy my old message below:

`V l stale' shows the stale messages.

This is one of the dark corners of IMAP handling.  If everything is 
working correctly, the *only* time this warning should arise is when the 
IMAP server changes the UIDVALIDITY value.  In that case, all the 
messages in the cache folder become stale and VM will get fresh copies 
of everything.  In that case, you should answer yes to the question 
about expunge.

If the message arises in any other situation, you should know that 
something has gone wrong and you should be very careful with what you do 
next.  Two possibilities are:

- VM has successfully recovered from whatever went wrong, and obtained 
fresh copies of the messages.  In that case, it is fine to delete the 
stale copies and keep the good copies.

- VM didn't recover from the problems correctly and the stale copies 
are all that you have.  In that case, your safest course of action is to 
get rid of your imap-cache folder and let VM rebuild a new cache folder.

Be warned!  The IMAP code is not as fault-tolerant as it should be. 
Whenever you get vm-imap-protocol error with some other deeper error 
buried inside it, you should be wary.  It is incredibly hard to write 
fault-tolerant code and I can't promise that I got it right.  Getting 
rid of the imap-cache folder is the safest course of action.

 I read in an old posting that one solution is to:
 - Run: vm-prune-imap-retrieved-list
 - Remove the imap-cache folder and then let VM regenerate it
 
 Is this still the best way to do this?

Note that I distinguished between two separate cases in my previous message.
(i) UIDVALIDITY change and (ii) result of previous IMAP faults.  You haven't
said which case you are dealing with.

The first case (UIDVALIDITY change) is straightforward.  You can just get
rid of all the stale messages.

The second case is more complicated.  That is why VM leaves it to you to
figure out what went wrong and do the right thing.  VM has no idea what
faults might have occurred to cause those stale messages.  For all it knows,
the stale messages might be the only copies of those messages you have, and
if you delete them, you might lose them forever.

So, your best course is to find out what those stale messages are and
whether they are redundant copies are essential ones.

Cheers,
Uday

[VM] IMPORTANT: Bug reporting

[Uday Reddy]

Since you know that my time is extremely limited these days, may I ask
people to be a bit more systematic in reporting bugs?  

Please take some time now to read the Bugs section of the VM manual and
the link to the Emacs manual which explains how to report bugs.  The
subsection called Understanding Bug Reporting of the Emacs manual is
extremely clear and describes what you need to write in reporting bugs.

For an example of a well-constructed bug report, please see this (even
though it is not in the context of VM):

  https://code.google.com/p/autopair/issues/detail?id=49

Please note the level of precision required in reporting the problem.

For reporting VM bug reports, the best method to use is 

  M-x vm-submit-bug-report

That gives me the right level of information needed to understand the
problem. 

Most software developers only accept bug reports via the prescribed method.
In future, I also intend to accept only the bug reports submitted by the
prescribed method and ignore all problems reported on viewmail-info mailing
list.

Cheers,
Uday

Re: [VM] Trivial bugs in vm-8.2.0b

[Uday Reddy]

Dr Rainer Woitok writes:

 xemacs -batch -no-autoloads -l ./vm-build.el -f batch-byte-compile 
 vm-dired.el
 Compiling /home/Rainer/prod/vm-8.2.0b/lisp/vm-dired.el...
 Loading dired-mule...
 While compiling vm-dired-do-attach-files in file 
 /home/Rainer/prod/vm-8.2.0b/lisp/vm-dired.el:
   ** evaluating (= nil 0): (wrong-type-argument number-char-or-marker-p nil)
   ** evaluating ( nil 0): (wrong-type-argument number-char-or-marker-p nil)
 Wrote /home/Rainer/prod/vm-8.2.0b/lisp/vm-dired.elc
 Done

Thanks for reporting.  They do look like warnings because the compilation
got completed.  

The code of `vm-dired-do-attach-files' uses a macro caled
`dired-map-over-marks' defined in the Emacs library.  There are possibly
some problems with the macro.  In GNU Emacs, it works fine for me.  If you
are able to test this function in XEmacs, please let me know if it works.

Cheers,
Uday

Re: [VM] Are there plans to release 8.2?

[Uday Reddy]

John Stoffel writes:

 But this all just ignores my root question, why don't you release what
 you have now as 8.2.0c so we can see what's coming down the pike?
 Release early and often!

Because I have already mentioned that I didn't have spare time.

Spare time is what free software depends on, which is both its strength as
well as its weakness.  To benefit from free software, users should be
willing to spend enough effort of their own, to understand how things work,
to read user manuals and to figure out how to get around problems.

There is no such thing as 8.2.0c.  The a suffix (short for alpha-testing
release) is for asking people down the hall to test out new software.  The
b suffix (short for beta-testing release) is for asking users to try out a
preview of a new release and report problems that should be fixed before the
eventual release.  Recently people started doing another stage called
release candidate which follows beta releases.

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_release

What happened with 8.2.0 line is that I thought I was ready to go to
beta-testing stage which, in retrospect, wasn't right.  So, perhaps I should
go back to alpha releases so that we don't have to worry about the release
process.

The problems you reported with the 8.2.0b had easy work-arounds and, so,
weren't critical.  They were not reason enough to rush things.

Cheers,
Uday

Re: [VM] Are there plans to release 8.2?

[Uday Reddy]

John Stoffel writes:

 Sorry, my fault.  I was trying to come up with a repeatable test case
 that was easy to show the problem.  I *seems* to be because I do:
 
 - vm-visit-imap-folder
   - read a message
   - file the message to a *local* folder.
   - then expunge any changes with vm-expunge-folder followed by
 vm-save-folder.  It's the vm-save-folder which seems to try to
 update the imap flags.  Exchange fails the update command and
 vm doesn't seem to properly flush all the changes.
 
 But it's not quite clear to me what the root cause is.  I'll try to
 get a test case for you, to make it more clear what's going on.  

We already know that the root cause is that your Exchange server is
violating the IMAP standard.  I have quoted the standard to you in the last
exchange.  (See below.)  You should be complaining to the people that run
your Exchange server, not me.  You should also go back and re-read the old
thread, and continue the discussion there, not in this thread.

What I have asked from you is a *precise description* of what goes wrong
with VM as a result of this problem.  doesn't seem to properly flush all
the changes is too vague to tell me anything.

Cheers,
Uday




The IMAP standard (RFC 3501) says:

   59) It is not an error for the client to store a flag that is not in
   the PERMANENTFLAGS list; however, the server will either ignore the
   change or make the change in the session only.

So, unfortunately, your Exchange server is not adhering to the standard.
Please do complain to whoever is running your Exchange server.

All that I can do is to make VM resilient so that it carries on regardless
of the error messages.  So, what happens after these error messages arise?
Does VM break in some way?

Cheers,
Uday

Re: [VM] Are there plans to release 8.2?

[Uday Reddy]

John Stoffel writes:

 As far as I'm concerned, the problems I see lately are:
 
 - on startup, vm doesn't auto-load vm-reply properly.  It's probably a
   stupidly simple bug, but it's annoying.  Basically I have to 'r'eply
   to a mesage before 'm' to create a new message will work.

If you start up by doing M-x vm, then everything starts up just fine.  The
only time I know where this doesn't work is if you start VM by running
mail-user-agent, perhaps by clicking on a URL somewhere.

 - IMAP support so that vm-visit-imap-folder will ask for a password
   properly.  I figure using the code that vm-list-imap-folders uses
   would be enough, but my elisp skills are non-existent.

What you are looking for is automatic password management.  Emacs does it by
using EasyPG (a gnu encryption library).  I am attaching an extract from the
VM manual that describes how to set it up.

 - Fix IMAP support when run against exchange mail servers.  If I read
   a message, and file it locally, it seems that Exchange doesn't like
   that command, and VM can't handle it either.  I have to go through,
   find all the filed emails and delete them before I can get VM to save
   properly.  

Looking back at that discussion, I find that we discovered that your
Exchange server was misbehaving.  I asked you for information on how VM
breaks as a result of it, and haven't heard from you since.

Cheers,
Uday



   If your environment has the EasyPG utility and your version of
Emacs supports it, i.e., has the `epa-file' and `auth-source' libraries,
then you can store password information in a file such as
`.authinfo.gpg'.  The `EasyPG' protocol allows you to store this
information in an encrypted form so that it cannot be read by third
parties.  Each line in the `.authinfo.gpg' file should be of the form

 machine HOST login USER password PASSWORD port PORT

where HOST, USER, PASSWORD and PORT are as detailed above.  Ensure that
the variable `auth-sources' is customized to refer to your authinfo
file.  *Note Help for users: (auth)Help for users.  Then VM will read
passwords from the file and you don't need to type them in when
accessing mail servers.

   If you have multiple login accounts on the same HOST then VM will
only use the first login listed in the authinfo file.  To allow for
multiple login's, the HOST entry in the authinfo line can be replaced
by an account name as defined internally in VM.  These account names are
defined via the variables `vm-pop-folder-alist' and
`vm-imap-account-alist', described below.

Re: [VM] vm-visit-imap-folder problem in 8.2.0b

[Uday Reddy]

John Stoffel writes:

 That works once I'm in the folder and have successfully
 authenticated.  But if I start up, and do NOT have my imap folder
 accessed at all, then doing M-x vm-visit-imap-folder doesn't ask for my
 password at all.  I have to do M-x vm-list-imap-folders, then it asks
 me interactively.  

Oh, I didn't realize that you were expecting it to ask for a password
*before* you have even specified an IMAP folder.  It won't.  You will need
to specify which IMAP folder you are trying to access so that it knows what
password to ask.

And, the IMAP folder has to be specifed in the format account:mailbox.

If you are just trying to get to your default INBOX, then please set
vm-primary-inbox.  Then M-x vm is all that you need to type in.

Cheers,
Uday

Re: [VM] vm-visit-imap-folder problem in 8.2.0b

[Uday Reddy]

John Stoffel writes:

 So now when I startup VM and do 'vm-visit-imap-folder' it doesn't ask
 me for my password, while 'vm-list-imap-folders' does.  So in a new
 emacs/vm session, I have to first list the folders, then I can visit
 my imap folder.

You probably need to hit `g' (vm-get-new-mail) for VM to access the server.  

Please check the *Messages* buffer to see if there were any errors.  

(I recall I had some issues with defining what constitutes an interactive
use.  I have straightened them out now in the trunk.)

Cheers,
Uday

Re: [VM] Mainly: How do you use virtual folders every day? and other questions

[Uday Reddy]

Kyle Farrell writes:

 lists.  I bind vm-switch-to-folder to a handy key (I use `), then
 finding a folder is simply ` followed by C-s and a few characters of
 the folder name.

Interesting.  I never knew about the C-s trick in all these years!  I use
SPC for completion, and UP/DOWN for scrolling through minibuffer
history.  But I should learn to use C-s, which seems more efficient.

 What is missing for me is a summary view of all folders.  Something
 that could show each folder and the number of unread messages similar
 to Outlook's summary (sorry! I shouldn't mention that product).  Seems
 like this could be some sort of speedbar integration.

VM actually has a folders-summary feature.  Unfortunately, it is tied to
something called berkeley-db.  I never had berkeley-db and, so, never used
it.  Arik Mitschang has been working on decoupling the folders-summary from
berkeley-db.  Some of his work can be found in this branch:

  https://code.launchpad.net/~akwm/vm/folders-summary-experimental

Arik, are you online?

Cheers,
Uday

Re: [VM] Mainly: How do you use virtual folders every day? and other questions

[Uday Reddy]

stefan.grosshau...@stmail.uni-bayreuth.de writes:

 Uday Reddy wrote some time ago
 (http://lists.nongnu.org/archive/html/viewmail-info/2012-10/msg00025.html) :
  But I still wanted the subject tags retained in the INBOX
  folders, because the mail comes from a variety of sources and I want to be
  able to quickly eyeball it for important stuff.  However, once I have filed
  away the mail in archival folders, I wanted the subject tags to disappear.
 
 My question is: How, in more detail, do you use vm, dealing with lots of
 email traffic, lists, newsletters and private mails?  

I discovered through experience that I am the kind of guy that only looks at
one INBOX regularly.  So, sorting incoming mail into separate folders
doesn't help me.  I never look at the stuff that has been sorted away.  So,
I stick to a single INBOX.

(That is not entirely true.  I have a separate INBOX on my home account, one
on gmail, and one for my vmrocks account etc.  But I look at those less
frequently, and things that go there are rarely time-critical.  This mailing
list, for instance, goes into my standard INBOX.)

My normal mode of reading email is:

- if something can be taken care of immediately, do it, and archive it.
(What I mean by archive is saving it in a purpose-built folder, perhaps
the folder for a course I am teaching, a research project I am working on,
discussions with a particular colleague etc.)

- if it cannot be taken care of immediately and needs to stay around in the
INBOX, leave it there.  Typically, there will be some toing-and-froing and
follow-ups to such messages.  When it looks like that thread has reached its
end, I can archive it.

- if it is purely an informational message, I either delete it after
reading, or let it stay if it has some longer life span.  (For instance, an
announcement for a meeting or a seminar that might happen in a few
days/weeks time.)

I do the regular archiving using `auto-folder-alist'.  This is the No. 1
most useful feature of VM for me, which is not available in most other mail
clients.  I can define the auto-folder-alist using clues from the names of
the senders, recipients and subject headings.  I could perhaps use
`vm-virtual-auto-folder-alist' as well.  But I haven't gotten around to
converting my old `auto-folder-alist'.

The overall principle is that my valuable mail is in the archival folders,
where it is easy to find things.  The INBOX is just a waystation in getting
there.

For the messages that are left around in the INBOX, my method involves
periodically cleaning it, by:

- archiving messages that need to be archived, 
- deleting messages that are of no use any more, and
- saving the rest in a compressed version of the INBOX in quarterly chunks,
  e.g., INBOX.2012-1.gz, INBOX.2012-2.gz etc.

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to do this cleaning for several years
because the volume of email has grown far too much.  So, currently, I am
developing virtual folder techniques to help me do the cleaning.  For
instance, I now have a softspam virtual folder that tries to identify all
the messages that can be deleted.  Some other virtual folders group messages
related to some particular topic so that I can process them more easily
during the cleaning process.  But I don't have this fully developed yet.

 For simplicity, let's assume I only have one inbox, say a POP box.  Now I
 defined some virtual folders which can sort out certain mailing lists or
 other regularly arriving messages. But physically they remain in the inbox
 and in this inbox I still have a mixture of private mails and others.  Do
 you have a certain filter for private mails? 

Yes, it might be possible to define virtual folders that identify all the
private mails.  It takes time to develop these virtual folders, and they are
rarely fool-proof because the world keeps changing and you have to keep
adding rules to cover it.

 Or do you use vm-virtual-auto-archive?  

I personally never use auto-archive.  Since the mail I want archived is the
valuable mail, it doesn't serve my purpose to archive everything, which is
what auto-archive does.  

The auto-folder-alist variables work for manual archiving (i.e., saving) as
well as for auto-achirving.

Cheers,
Uday

Re: [VM] bug with labels in virtual folders

[Uday Reddy]

Julian Bradfield writes:

 My vm is Uday's private 8.2.X branch of 6 February 2012, but I think
 this bug is still in trunk (haven't tried it, though).

Confirmed that this bug is present in the 8.2.x branch, but not the trunk.
It is either fixed in the trunk or perhaps became harder to reproduce.  So,
I will have to investigate why it is happening in the 8.2.x branch.

Cheers,
Uday

Re: [VM] Non-ASCII ISO-8859-1 characters not shown correctly

[Uday Reddy]

Yoshiharu Kohayakawa writes:

 Discarding the cache fixed all subject lines but one.  This is a message in
 utf-8, which I put in the file octal_subject_message at
 
   http://www.ime.usp.br/~yoshi/TMP/VM/

This message is not in correct MIME format.  Any non-ASCIi characters in the
message headers are required to be MIME-encoded.  Here, they are not.  VM's
treatment of it is therefore correct and the best possible under the
circumstances.  

Cheers,
Uday

Re: [VM] vm-sit-for, display-hourglass, etc

[Uday Reddy]

Jay Borkenhagen writes:

 I changed display-hourglass to nil, and I now I do see the No new
 mail ... message disappear from the minibuffer after 4 seconds.  If
 that is what I have to do to get the desired behavior I'm OK with
 that, but I think this all may not be working the way Uday had
 intended so I decided to mention it here.

Yes, I remember the issues now.  While sit-for is doing its sitting, the
hourglass will keep showing that Emacs is busy.  This was confusing to users
because they tend to wait for the hourglass to go off before doing their
next operation.

So, yes, if you want the 4 second disappearance, you need to turn off the
hourglass.

Cheers,
Uday

Re: [VM] vm-pcrisis

[Uday Reddy]

Jay Borkenhagen writes:

 One thing that isn't quite working as I used to have or as is
 documented in the texinfo is the prompting.  Per the texinfo:
 
   One thing to bear in mind is that when you are prompted, there will
   be auto-completion available -- you'll only need to type enough to
   uniquely identify a profile (you won't even need to hit TAB).
 
 I find that I do need to hit tab now to get the auto-completion.  

I have now investigated what has happened to VMPC.  VMPC was written by Rob
Hodges, and probably posted on the VM newsgroup.  Rob Fenk picked it up and
included it in his unofficial distribution, which eventually became the
current VM distribution (VM 8.0.x, 8.1.x,...).

In July 2006, Rob Fenk writes in the development log

  Added vm-pcrisis.texi and set versions of VMPC to 1.0
  The maintainer will not come back so I will take over!

which suggests that Rob Hodges had discontinued contact and the control
passed to Rob Fenk.  I see that Rob F made significant changes to VMPC, some
that are not consistent with the manual.  He did not always update the
manual to reflect the changes.

The inconsistency you found here is an instance of that situation.  In the
original VMPC, a profile was a single VMPC action, which was
auto-completed.  Rob F changed profile to mean a list of actions, and the
list elements had to be entered by typing RET.  So, I presume
auto-completion via RET was discarded.  The doc string for
`vmpc-prompt-for-profile' describes what is going on.  The manual continues
to say what it used to say, but the code has diverged.

I would agree that this is an unsatisfactory situation.  But there have been
regular users of VMPC on this list, and they don't seem to have complained
about these issues.  And, users like you that continued to use old
versions didn't complain either.  Now Rob F has also discontinued contact.
So, until and unless we get a new maintainer for VMPC, we have to make do
with what we have.

I might at some point decide to write my own version of VMPC.  But it will
be a new package which will strive to avoid all the mess with the current
package.  I won't bother to maintain consistency with any of the existing
versions.

Cheers,
Uday

Re: [VM] vm-pcrisis

[Uday Reddy]

Hi Jay, when I corrected the two typos in your customization (changing
`vmpc-action-alist' to `vmpc-actions-alist', and `vmpc-replies-alist' to
`vmpc-reply-alist'), it ran perfectly fine as you were wanting.

By the way, I recommend using standard symbols, e.g., always-true, instead
of elaborate strings like condition that's always true.  The more fancy
you make these names, the more chance of typos there will be.  And, they
don't have to be strings either.  I don't know why Rob Hodges was so fond of
strings.  Symbols work perfectly fine.

Cheers,
Uday



 (require 'vm-pcrisis)
 
 (setq vmpc-conditions 
   '(
 (condition that's always true
't
)))
 
 (setq vmpc-actions
   '(
   (work
(vmpc-substitute-header From Jay Borkenhagen j...@work.com)
(vmpc-substitute-header Reply-To Jay Borkenhagen j...@work.com)
)
 
   (braeburn
(vmpc-substitute-header From Jay Borkenhagen j...@braeburn.org)
(vmpc-substitute-header Reply-To Jay Borkenhagen 
 j...@braeburn.org)
)
 
   (prompt for a profile
(vmpc-prompt-for-profile)
)
   )
   )
 
 
 (setq vmpc-action-alist 
   '(
   (condition that's always true prompt for a profile)
   )
   )
 
 (setq vmpc-newmail-alist 
   '(
   (condition that's always true prompt for a profile)
   )
   )
 
 (setq vmpc-replies-alist 
   '(
   (condition that's always true prompt for a profile)
   )
   )
 
 ;;; END pcrisis stuff
 ;
 
 
 

Re: [VM] gmail issue

[Uday Reddy]

Uday Reddy writes:

 When I send a message to the viewmail-info mailing list from this email
 account (usr.vm.ro...@gmail.com) I don't get a copy of the message back to
 the account.  I don't recall this happening a few months ago.

I have done some testing to find out what gmail is doing.  As we know, gmail
doesn't have folders.  All your messages go into a single message-base, and
folders are a front for the different labels that one might put on the
messages in this single message-base.

If you use the IMAP-FCC header to put your outgoing messages in some folder
(say Sent) then, when a regular copy of your message arrives, gmail
recognizes that it is already there in your message-base and silently drops
the new copy.  If you don't use IMAP-FCC, then it seems that the new copies
do arrive in your INBOX.

The easiest way to get around the difficulty is to combine your INBOX and
Sent folder into a single virtual folder.  Here is what you might put in
your .vm file:

(defun gmail-folder (folder)
  Short hand function for referring to gmail folders.
  (format imap-ssl:imap.gmail.com:993:%s:login:YOUR-LOGIN-ID:* folder))

(add-to-list 'vm-virtual-folder-alist
  `(gmail
( 
 ,(list (gmail-folder INBOX) (gmail-folder Sent))
 (any

(defun gmail ()
  Visit the combined gmail INBOX  Sent folders.
  (interactive)
  (vm-visit-virtual-folder gmail))

Then doing `M-x gmail' should show you the combined INBOX and Sent folders.

Cheers,
Uday

Re: [VM] vm-set-labels question

[Uday Reddy]

Julian Bradfield writes:

 I don't understand this code. Where is it that it sets the labels on
 the real message and the virtual messages of the message?

I don't think I understood the code all that clearly either.

You are right that it is not doing anything to the virtual mirrors.  But the
virtual mirrors probably don't have their own labels.  They just share the
real message's labels.  So, the visible effect is what I have written in the
doc string.

The function is however setting the undo-records and buffer-modification
flags for the virtual mirrors.

Cheers,
Uday

Re: [VM] gmail issue

[Uday Reddy]

James Freer writes:

 Could this be a problem with the new gmail UI and the way it handles
 replies. I notice they've removed it for this weekend which makes me
 think there are some problems to be sorted. In which case your
 problem could disappear.

There do seem to be changes... and bugs.  The gmail IMAP server is not at
present responding to the LOGOUT command.  So, VM hangs waiting to hear back
from the server.  I hope they will fix this soon.

Mark Diekhans writes:

 Google groups doesn't send you a copy of your message when you
 post to a list.  We have been told they view this as a `feature'
 which there is no control over.
 
 Sounds like they added the same `feature' to gmail :-(

Yeah, I think they have made an ill-thought out change here.  There are
possible work-arounds in VM using virtual folders.  I will post them here
when I have them working.

Cheers,
Uday

Re: [VM] vm-mark-folder-modified-p

[Uday Reddy]

Julian Bradfield writes:

 Returning to the problem noted a while ago of VM marking a read-only
 folder modified when it upgrades attribute data:
 Is there *any* case in which vm-mark-folder-modified-p should work on
 a read-only folder?

Good thinking, Julian.  This should be a good place to catch all the
read-only folder modifications that you don't want.  The old issue with the
attribute data has been fixed in the trunk:

  https://bugs.launchpad.net/vm/+bug/932602

I am sure there would be other cases where read-only folders are modified,
but I think none of them would be essential.  All the essenntial
modifications are disallowed as noted in the doc string of
vm-folder-read-only.  So, it should be fine to discard them.

Cheers,
Uday

[VM] gmail issue

[Uday Reddy]

When I send a message to the viewmail-info mailing list from this email
account (usr.vm.ro...@gmail.com) I don't get a copy of the message back to
the account.  I don't recall this happening a few months ago.

I wonder if anybody else is experiencing this problem?  

(I save outgoing messages in Sent which becomes [IMAP]/Sent on gmail.  I
wonder if gmail thinks that I already have a copy of the message in my
account and kills the new copy coming into my Inbox?)

Cheers,
Uday

PS. When I logged into the gmail webmail it served up 4 ads for me: 3 on
bug control companies in my region and one on some software built on top
of VMWare.

Re: [VM] Email dangers portrayed in media

[Uday Reddy]

James Freer writes:

 Gmail UI seems more secure in that respect but their big negative is to
 hide bottom portion of the message which is why i went back to using an
 email client again.

You mean, when you send a message, you can't see what stuff you are citing?
That is even worse than Outlook!

But the biggest negative of gmail is of course is that it productizes you.
(If you don't pay for a product, you are the product.)

Cheers,
Uday

[VM] The Google docs paradigm

[Uday Reddy]

A major shift in computer technology over the last 20 years or so is the
simplification of user interfaces allowing more people can use the systems
in an easier way.  Unfortunately, some simplifications come at a price.  The
older methods might have had flexibility or reliability that the newer
methods lose.

One of the shifts that is occurring at present is what I call the Google
docs paradigm, which says that you don't need a 'Save' button.  A variety
of other tools are coming on the scene too, like dropbox etc., which do
automatic synchronization between clients and servers.

As emacsers, most of us probably believe in a 'Save' button.  It allows us
to load a file or mail folder into an Emacs buffer, work with it, and save
it only when we are confident that all the changes need to be made
permanent.

Well, what if you forget to hit the 'Save' button?  Or, your system crashes?
Or, you run out of battery?  Or you had to shut things down to go and catch
a train (or an airplane)?  Emacs introduced an autosave facility to mitigate
against that.  However, Emacs was designed when people mostly used single
servers, typically from single clients.  We are now a lot more networked.
So, having lots of copies of the same file/folder in different places with
slightly different states adds considerable complexity.  Newer generations
of users that are brought up on 'Google docs' will tend to think we are
dinosaurs.

So, the question is, should we minize the use of the 'Save' button?  Or, at
least provide a way to do automatic synchronization between clients and
servers?

Cheers,
Uday

Re: [VM] Key bindings from presentation buffer reappears in the reply

[Uday Reddy]

Göran Uddeborg writes:

 When I do vm-reply-include-text, it appears this keymap is applied
 also to the reply to be edited.  If I happen to type return inside the
 URL when editing the reply, I will go to that URL rather than insert a
 newline as I would have expected.  I think I've been hit by other keys
 behaving in unexpected ways too, though I'm not sure.

Yes, it is a bug.  But it is not easy to fix because the included text is
now generated by the same code that generates the Presentation buffer.  Thus
the URL's are energized.  So, don't hit RETURN over them.

The keymap issue is more likely the problem of turning on w3m-mode.  It
has been around for a while:

  https://bugs.launchpad.net/vm/+bug/587181

Can somebody take a look?  It merely involves tuning the w3m-mode
appropriately inside replies.

Cheers,
Uday

Re: [VM] Beginner VM questions

[Uday Reddy]

Julian Bradfield writes:

 Urgh. mbox format is totally sick. From-stuffing will screw you
 whatever you do. mbox format is the most evil Unix legacy not yet
 exterminated.
 I recommend mmdf format. (Not ideal, but I've never yet had cause to
 send a mail including the mmdf delimiter.)

Hi Julian, VM doesn't do any From-stuffing.  Some other Unix tools do.  So,
as long as VM is fetching mail from POP3 servers and putting it in own mbox,
there are no problems.

Cheers,
Uday

Re: [VM] Beginner VM questions

[Uday Reddy]

Peter Davis writes:

 Ok, since this was met with stoney silence, and my searches for using VM
 with Maildir haven't been too fruitful, how about MH format? I assume VM
 still supports that, right?

Sorry, Peter.  You are out luck.  VM doesn't support either mailder or MH
format (yet).  There is an on-going wishlist item, but I have no idea when
we will get to it.  

The only support VM has for any maildir-like format is that it can define
virtual folders over directories.  I presume it would look something like
this: 

 (setq vm-virtual-folder-alist
'(
  ;; start virtual folder definition
  (virtual-folder-name
   ((/path/to/maildir1 /path/to/maildir2)
(header foo)
   )
  )
  ;; end of virtual folder definition
;; more virtual folders if needed
)
 )

If this set-up works, you will be able to at least read the maildir
folders.  I don't think you will be able to operate on them.

If you want full inter-operability with your Mutt set-up, I think it won't
be possible.

 I could convert my Maildir folders back to MH (as they were
 originally). Then I'd be using VM to fetch new mail from POP3 servers
 and add it to the MH repository, and of course to read, reply, forward,
 etc.

If you are commiting to using VM, then your best bet is to keep VM folders
in its native mbox format, and work with Mutt and VM in parallel for a
while.  Once you are sure you are comfortable with VM, you can convert
maildir/MH folders to mbox folders.  I think MH has a way of doing it.

There is no problem with accessing POP3 servers from VM, or downloading mail
from them into VM folders.

Cheers,
Uday

Re: [VM] vm-pipe-messages-to-command messes up on virtual folders

[Uday Reddy]

On 8/21/2012 3:33 PM, viewmail-i...@kosowsky.org wrote:

vm-pipe-messages-to-command seems to mess up the list of marked
messages and the location of the current message after running when
used in a *virtual* folder (it works fine in normal folders).


I couldn't reproduce the problem you mention.  Please try things without 
any customizations, and if you still have it, please M-x 
vm-submit-bug-report.


Cheers,
Uday

Re: [VM] vm-pipe-messages-to-command messes up on virtual folders

[Uday Reddy]

On 8/21/2012 3:33 PM, viewmail-i...@kosowsky.org wrote:

vm-pipe-messages-to-command seems to mess up the list of marked
messages and the location of the current message after running when
used in a *virtual* folder (it works fine in normal folders).


I couldn't reproduce the problem you mention.  Please try things without 
any customizations, and if you still have it, please M-x 
vm-submit-bug-report.


Cheers,
Uday

Re: [VM] vm-pipe-messages-to-command messes up on virtual folders

[Uday Reddy]

Sorry for the multiple copies.  (I made the mistake of sending that message
from Thunderbird, which misbehaved!)

Cheers,
Uday

Re: [VM] Gnu.emacs.vm.info (.bugs) dropped from gnu.emacs hierarchy (again)

[Uday Reddy]

Kurt Hackenberg writes:

 You can use them, but you are dependent on the mail - news gateway at
 Stanford (the same one that all gnu newsgroups use) functioning properly.
 Our newsgroup is no more deprecated than any other gnu newsgroup.
 
 So that gateway doesn't work?  Why not?  Did it ever work?

It probably works 80-90% of the time.  But, when it goes down, it goes down
for a long period of time, until somebody notices and complains and somebody
pays attention to it.  Even when it is working, messages seem to take a long
time to go through the gateway.  It is possible that the gateway was written
locally and hasn't been kept up over the years.

The mail - gmane gateway, on the other hand, is pretty much perfect.  So,
those of us that don't want to use the mailing-list can simply use gmane,
and the problem is solved.

Cheers,
Uday

Re: [VM] IMAP-SSL with Exchange Server

[Uday Reddy]

Lewis Perin writes:

 At this point, would it be appropriate to file a bug on the Launchpad
 site?

The best way to file bug reports is to use M-x vm-submit-bug-report.  But
the bug-report function normally doesn't include private information in
your settings, such as logins.  So, you might need to add them manually.

The only problem you seem to have at the moment is that the login didn't
work.  So, that is what you need to check.

 
 I’ve appended my current .vm in case anyone wants to find a flaw I’ve
 missed:
 
 ;; start of .vm
 
 (setq vm-imap-account-alist
   '(
 (imap-ssl:imap.gmail.com:993:*:login:m...@gmail.com:* Gmail)
 (imap-ssl:owa.myschool.edu:993:*:login:m...@myschool.edu:* Cornell 
 IMAP)
 )
  )

The login should be whatever your IMAP server wants you to use.  It seems to
unlikely that they want you to use something like m...@myschool.edu.  You
should check the documentation you have been given for your IMAP server.

Cheers,
Uday

Re: [VM] vm-reply/followup-include presentation

[Uday Reddy]

blueman writes:

 I'm trying to figure out what has happened to
 vm-reply-include-presentation and vm-followup-include presentation.
 
 The describe-function documentation is a bit unclear, since it seems to
 imply that a function is obsoleted and replaced by a variable, which is
 a bit non-obvious to understand.

When I do describe-function, I get this:

 vm-reply-include-presentation is an interactive compiled Lisp function
 in `vm-rfaddons.el'.

 (vm-reply-include-presentation COUNT optional TO-ALL)

 This function is obsolete since 8.2.0;
 use `vm-include-text-from-presentation' instead.

 Include presentation instead of text.
 This does only work with my modified VM, i.e. a hacked `vm-yank-message'.

The first thing to note is that this function belongs to vm-rfaddons, not
VM.  It is not being maintained ever since Rob F has gone AWOL.  Ideally,
Rob F should have called the variable `vmrf-reply-include-presentation' or
something like that, but he didn't care to follow such niceties.  Since
Rob's doc string says that it only works with his hacked vm-yank-message,
you should be really worried.  (I have no idea what it means.)

VM now has the ability to include the text from the Presentation buffer,
which you get by using `vm-include-text-from-presentation'.  Please try it
and let me know if it doesn't fit the bill.

But even this setting shouldn't be normally necessary.  Just standard VM
inclusion should work fine.

 If I am understanding the message, it seems that the obsoleted functions
 are replaced by a single *function* vm-reply-include-text and the
 behavior supersedes vm-reply-include-presentation *and*
 vm-followup-include-presentation depending on the value of the
 *variable* vm-reply-include-presentation.

The Emacs doc string, at least when you use it in a GUI version of Emacs,
has hyperlinks.  In particular, vm-rfaddons.el on the first line is a
hyperlink.  If you click on it, it will take you to the source code, and you
can check to see what is happening.

 All of this is ok so far, but it seems at least from the function
 documentation that we are *losing* the ability to follow-up to multiple
 marked messages which was a really *unique* and *nice* feature of
 vm. Specifically, one could mark several messages in a thread (for
 example) and reply to all of them at once.

Note that `vm-include-text-from-presentation' is a *variable*, not a
function.  It is talking about what text is included in the reply.  It also
says that it is an experimental feature and should not be used normally.
So, please don't use it unless you have good reason to.

 If I am understanding this correctly, I am not sure why one would want
 to regress this function?

I am not regressing it, but it is likely to regress sooner or later because
it is undocumented, unmaintained code that nobody is taking responsibility
for.  Be warned!

Cheers,
Uday

Re: [VM] Default account for imap

[Uday Reddy]

blueman writes:

 Given that there is a concept of a vm-imap-default-account, I think it
 might be helpful if such a default could be used to shorten references
 to imap folders on the default account, especially since most people are
 probably just using the default account the majority if not all of the
 time.

If you use only one IMAP account, you need to type it only the first time.
Later on, the prompt will automatically use it as the default.

But it is a good idea to use the default account for the first prompt as
well.  I will put it on the to-do list.

Cheers,
Uday

Re: [VM] Default account for imap

[Uday Reddy]

blueman writes:

 I agree that pre-filling it in as the default is helpful in terms of
 saving typing but is it really necessary from a simplicity/cleanliness
 perspective. In other words, I would prefer a behavior that assumed the
 default server (maybe not even a need for a colon at all) unless
 otherwise specified.

Sorry, I absolutely don't agree with this cleanliness claim.  People can
have many imap accounts and, in addition, local folders, and they can use
the same folder names in all of them.  The place where the folder exists is
an important part of its identity.  I have no inclination to brush under the
carpet the differences that exist and that should be noted/remembered.

In fact, the problem for many of us has been quite the opposite.  We have
had users that said they have 10 different inbox folders and they can't
keep track of which is which.  So, I added a tweak so that inbox folder
buffers are named by their account names inside Emacs.

 This is obviously not a big deal, ...

Exactly.  So let us drop it.

Cheers,
Uday

Re: [VM] IMAP-SSL with Exchange Server

[Uday Reddy]

Lewis Perin writes:

 So, where does it get into trouble?
 
 Immediately on login, I get “vm-imap-protocol-error: IMAP protocol
 error: unexpected char (10)”.  

Indeed, you said that.   But what is in the trace buffer at this point?  In
particular, is there a line without a CR character (^M)?

 And, as I noted earlier in this thread,
 when I tried setting vm-imap-tolerant-of-bad-imap to 1, emacs became
 unresponsive and eventually exhausted its memory.

Evidently, there is a problem with the server interaction.  So, setting this
flag doesn't help us.

Cheers,
Uday

Re: [VM] IMAP-SSL with Exchange Server

[Uday Reddy]

Lewis Perin writes:

  cygwin warning:
MS-DOS style path detected: c:\temp\vm387560729
Preferred POSIX equivalent is: /cygdrive/c/temp/vm387560729
CYGWIN environment variable option nodosfilewarning turns off this
warning.
Consult the user’s guide for more details about POSIX paths:
  http://cygwin.com/cygwin-ug-net/using.html#using-pathnames
 
 So, clearly you need to fix this issue in order to get a clean IMAP session
 for VM.
 
 For some value of “clean”: this is a warning, but is it consequential?

The warning message is meant for you, not VM!  VM won't know what to do with
it.  You should create a CYGWIN environment variable with nodosfilewarning
as its value, and get rid of the warning message.

Windows Emacs will necessarily use Windows path names, which Cygwin doesn't
like.  But they gave you a work-around.  So, please use it.

I don't know why it is working for gmail.  But it is likely that it is
breaking in some more subtle ways.  VM is trying to listen to the server and
the warning message is interfering with it.

Cheers,
Uday

Re: [VM] Any interest in trying to make local vs. IMAP folder treatment more seamless

[Uday Reddy]

blueman writes:

 Unfortunately, vm itself is not just binding heavy but actually binding
 dependent in that some key functions *only* seem to work when called
 from a key binding rather than from M-x. I think this is true btw for
 certain mark-related functions with next command uses marks. So that
 while aliases would shorten typing they still don't solve that problem.

That is true, but note that `vm-visit-imap-folder' is something you would
never invoke with marked messages.

My solution has been to free up as many key bindings as possible so that the
users can bind them to whatever is most important to them.  We also have
thread operations now, which can be invoked without messing with message
marking.

Cheers,
Uday

Re: [VM] 8.2.0b bug

[Uday Reddy]

John Stoffel writes:

 I think I just found a bug in version 8.2.0b which I'm using on my
 work machine (Centos 6.2, x86_64, emacs 23.1.1).  When I mark a group
 of messages by subject, then save them, it tells me how many were
 written.

Thanks, John.  This has been fixed in the trunk, thanks to John Hein.  I
haven't had the time to create a follow-up release yet.

Cheers,
Uday

Re: [VM] How to launch vm without spool and imap folders only...

[Uday Reddy]

blueman writes:

 That works like a charm...
 Now that my primary-inbox is an IMAP folder, what do I do with the
 following variables:
  vm-crash-box (since I am not spooling, is there anything to crash?
so should this be set to nil or is it automatically
irrelevant)
 
  vm-spool-files (I don't want any spooling, so I presume this should
  be set to nil since my primary mail box is an IMAP 
 folder)

These variables only have relevance for local folders and spool files.  So,
when you use IMAP folders they will be ignored.

Congratulations on your successful transition to IMAP folders!

Cheers,
Uday

Re: [VM] imap-fcc and gmail

[Uday Reddy]

emacs user writes:

 so trying 
 IMAP-FCC: [Gmail]/Sent Mail
 doesn't work for me, unfortunately, not sure what I am doing wrong.

Apparently there was a bug in the code for IMAP-FCC, which I have now fixed.

Cheers,
Uday

Re: [VM] automatic display of mime messages

[Uday Reddy]

lsmit...@hare.demon.co.uk writes:

 I've read  read the vm info pages but I still can't get automatic display
 of mine encoded messages to work. Please could someone point out out what
 I'm doing wrong?

It is a good idea *not* to customize variables unless you really need to.
All the settings you have listed below are either the defaults or they are
covered by defaults.  So, they don't achieve anything.

 My vm mine settings:
 
 (setq vm-auto-decode-mime-messages t)
 (setq vm-mime-decode-for-preview t)
 (setq vm-mime-auto-displayed-content-types t)
 (setq vm-mime-internal-content-types t)

What you seem to want is to use an *external* viewer for HTML.  VM will try
to display it internally if at all possible.  The method being used to
display it can be seen in the value of `vm-mime-text/html-handler'.  This is
automatically set by VM when it starts up, based on what is available in
your environment.  It is likely that this method is breaking and, so, you
are getting a button instead of an internal display.  You can look at the
*Messages* buffer to see if any error messages have been generated.

To override this automatic function, you can set the variable
`vm-mime-text/html-handler' to nil in your .vm file.

Or you can also exclude HTML from being viewed internally by setting

(setq vm-mime-internal-content-type-exceptions '(text/html))

Cheers,
Uday

Re: [VM] Newbie emacs/imap question

[Uday Reddy]

blueman writes:

 From what I have seen, most of the vm-imap documentation seems to be the
 reverse setup where people want to use vm/imap as a client to read their
 google email from a google (or other remote) server. Instead, I want to
 use a remote non-vm mail reader to read my vm mail remotely from my
 droid.

Indeed, VM is a mail *reader*, not a mail server.  To do what you want, you
would want to set up an IMAP server on your home machine.  If you do web
search for IMAP server, you can find a number of IMAP servers that you
would be able to install on a home machine.  I think many Linux
distributions also include such IMAP servers.  There is also a program
called 'offlineimap' which can synchronize your home IMAP server with a
remote one.

You might then set up your VM on your home machine to either (i) download
mail from the IMAP server into your local folders, or (ii) read it directly
from the IMAP server using server folders.

Here is an Emacs guru that documents how to do such things (but with Gnus
in place of VM):

http://sachachua.com/blog/2008/05/geek-how-to-use-offlineimap-and-the-dovecot-mail-server-to-read-your-gmail-in-emacs-efficiently/

Cheers,
Uday

Re: [VM] automatic display of mime messages

[Uday Reddy]

lsmit...@hare.demon.co.uk writes:

 Actually what I want is for vm to automatically display mime internally,
 just as if I had hit enter on the attachment.
 
 Is that possible?

Yes it is possible.  The default settings already do that.  

If it is not working for you, it is because something is breaking.  You need
to investigate what is breaking.

Cheers,
Uday