Re: [VM] Mainly: How do you use virtual folders every day? and other questions
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? Yeah, I haven't worked on that in quite a while, but remember it mostly working. I don't use the feature any more, but used to actually keep it open in a third buffer (that, summary and preview). This was handy since our telescope operations sent out regular status emails I didn't want cluttering my inbox, but wanted to ensure they were coming in at a normal frequency (different types of status mails went automatically to different aptly named folders). I'm not sure why the berkeley-DB was originally chosen, but I just opted for a simple character separated plain text format. It also has a info node. Let me know what you think if you try it out. Even though I don't use it these days, its probably a good feature to have included in VM (seems a lot of other modern clients have this, and folks moving from them, or between them, may find it particularly useful) Cheers, -Arik
Re: [VM] Mainly: How do you use virtual folders every day? and other questions
Just to add my $0.02 on using virtual folders. I tend to use a lot of virtual folders at work. I'm subscribed to a ton of internal email 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. By creating a folder for various teams I work with (which may be one or more mailing lists), this makes it easy to get through mail associated with the team. 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. Not saying what I do is ideal. Posting here has proved to me that other's often have better solutions! -Kyle
Re: [VM] Mainly: How do you use virtual folders every day? and other questions
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 S. Reddy usr.vm.ro...@gmail.com writes: That is nice. So you work with virtual folders on a daily basis? Yes. This has been so for many, many (more than 15, but probably over 20) years... I am glad because that gives me a thorough testing of virtual folders. What techniques do you use to file stuff in INBOX.MM? A stupid shell script run by cron on the first day of the month moves my current ~/INBOX to ~/Mail/INBOX.MM (unless there's an Emacs running, in which case I get a warning mailed). -- Johan
Re: [VM] Mainly: How do you use virtual folders every day? and other questions
Thank you both a lot for your kind and detailed explanations! This way me and others can reuse some of your experiences. I have tried out sorting away messages with filter like the following and look at mail from several folders altogether with a virtual folder called inbox. In order to receive new mail while visiting this virtual folder I type 'g' and vm asks me for all the passwords and retrieves mail, which is okay for me. Johan Vromans schrieb am Saturday, January 19: Sometimes I archive mail that has been dealt with, e.g. business mail, but most often I do not. Every month, I move the INBOX to INBOX.MM, and the INBOX I work with is a virtual folder consisting of the current INBOX, and the old INBOXes of the past three months. This way I keep the mails that I have online limited to 1000-2000. I also like your archiving method, Johan. Have not yet configured it here, though. have a nice evening everyone Stefan ;; Examples: (setq vm-auto-folder-alist '( (^List-ID: (viewmail-info . vmlist)) (^\\(From\\|Sender\\): (\\(foo\\|bar\\|another\\) . newsletters)) ) ) (setq vm-virtual-folder-alist '( (inbox ((web gmail stmail opera) (any) ) ) ) )
Re: [VM] Mainly: How do you use virtual folders every day? and other questions
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
