On Wed, 02 Dec 2009 12:51:41 -0800, Carl wrote: > Hrm... still seeing the same inscrutable stuff that I find every time I > try to read gnus documentation. The "I want to read my mail!" post > describes "nnml" as "a one-file-one-mail backend" but then the closest > it gets to how to use it is: > So if you want to go with nnmbox, you can simply say: > (setq gnus-secondary-select-methods '((nnmbox ""))) > (The same for the other methods, kind of.) > And I'm lost. Besides the "kind of", which just makes me uneasy, how > does it make sense to configure an mbox backend with just an empty > string? Surely something needs to be told where to find an actual mbox > file? It uses its defaults. I use nnml to store my email (I like the one-file per email, indexed). To do that, I've simply added: ; Get email, and store in nnml: (setq gnus-secondary-select-methods '((nnml ""))) to my .gnus. Note that this makes Gnus fetch your email and store it in nnml-"format" under ~/Mail/ I would expect that setting mail-sources to an empty list will make Gnus not fetch your email for you. If you store your maildirs somewhere Gnus doesn't expect, you can configure the select-method further - see the nnmaildir node in the manual for instance, you can set 'directory' etc. > Or is this just selecting a backend for how GNUS should store mail that > it fetches? Yes, exactly. > Is there any hope for someone like me that doesn't want GNUS involved in > fetching mail, but just wants to use GNUS to read mail files that I have > in a big hierarchy of directories? Mail files in what format? I think the quickest way to do that is using foreign groups (but I've usually only used that to view mbox and RMAIL-files, maybe configuring a secondary select method is better with maildir). (It's "Gnus" by the way - "GNUS" was the predecessor of Gnus). > I keep feeling there must be a simple document somewhere that explains > how to do that---but I just can't find it. Simple and Gnus isn't always compatible :-) Best regards, Adam -- "Favours for the ungrateful Adam Sjøgren Unqualified & hateful" asjo@koldfront.dk