X-Git-Url: https://git.cworth.org/git?a=blobdiff_plain;f=doc%2FFAQ.txt;h=997a35735b1be65f111150452ef055f7789df717;hb=969061797a2a5e67c4869b64a00cd4511db27237;hp=52af386e49037cf9fa2ac5f696027ce3b6c8c6b5;hpb=7ed4f7d2c5b837eca606ee756e2086b146ccb574;p=sup diff --git a/doc/FAQ.txt b/doc/FAQ.txt index 52af386..997a357 100644 --- a/doc/FAQ.txt +++ b/doc/FAQ.txt @@ -1,28 +1,34 @@ Sup FAQ ------- +Q: What is Sup? +A: A console-based email client for people with a lot of email. + Q: What does Sup stand for? -A: It stands for "what's up?", which is more or less the question in - mind when I fire up my mail client. +A: "What's up?" -Q: If you love Gmail so much, why not just use it? -A: I hate ads, I hate using a mouse, and I hate non-programmability - and non-extensibility. +Q: Sup looks like a text-based Gmail. +A: First I stole their ideas. Then I improved them. - Also, Gmail encourages top-posting. THIS CANNOT BE TOLERATED! +Q: Why not just use Gmail? +A: I hate ads, I hate using a mouse, and I hate non-programmability and + non-extensibility. Also, Gmail doesn't let you use a monospace font, which is just - plain lame. + lame. + + Also, Gmail encourages top-posting. THIS CANNOT BE TOLERATED! Q: Why the console? -A: Because a keystroke is worth a hundred mouse clicks (as any Unix - user knows). Because you don't need web browser. Because you get +A: Because a keystroke is worth a hundred mouse clicks, as any Unix + user knows. Because you don't need web browser. Because you get instantaneous response and a simple interface. Q: How does Sup deal with spam? A: You can manually mark messages as spam, which prevents them from - showing up in future searches, but that's as far as Sup goes. Spam - filtering should be done by a dedicated tool like SpamAssassin. + showing up in future searches. Later, you can run a batch process to + remove such messages from your sources. That's as far as Sup goes. + Spam filtering should be done by a dedicated tool like SpamAssassin. Q: How do I delete a message? A: Why delete? Unless it's spam, you might as well just archive it. @@ -32,25 +38,19 @@ A: Ok, press the 'd' key. Q: But I want to delete it for real, not just add a 'deleted' flag in the index. I want it gone from disk! -A: Ok, at some point I plan to have a batch deletion tool that will - run through a source and delete all messages that have a 'spam' or - 'deleted' tags. But that doesn't exist yet. - -Q: I got some error message about needing to run sup-sync --changed - when I tried to read a message. What's that about? -A: If messages have been moved, deleted, or altered in a source, Sup - may have to rebuild its index for that source. For example, for - mbox files, reading a single unread message changes the offsets of - every file on disk. Rather than rescanning every time, Sup assumes - sources don't change except by having new messages added. If that - assumption is violated, you'll have to sync the index. - - The alternative is to rescan every source when Sup starts up. - Because Sup is designed to work with arbitrarily large mbox files, - this would not be a good idea. +A: Currently, for mbox sources, there is a batch deletion tool that + will strip out all messages marked as spam or deleted. + +Q: How well does Sup play with other mail clients? +A: Not well at all. If messages have been moved, deleted, or altered + due to some other client, Sup will have to rebuild its index for + that message source. For example, for mbox files, reading a single + unread message changes the offsets of every file on disk. Rather + than rescanning every time, Sup assumes sources don't change except + by having new messages added. If that assumption is violated, + you'll have to sync the index. Q: How do I back up my index? -Q: How do I make a state dump? A: Since the contents of the messages are recoverable from their sources using sup-sync, all you need to back up is the message state. To do this, simply run: @@ -63,11 +63,10 @@ A: Run: sup-sync [+] --restored --restore where was created as above. -Q: I upgraded Ferret and the index format changed. I need to - completely rebuild my index. How do I do this? -A: First, you'll need a complete state dump. If you haven't made - one, you'll need to downgrade Ferret and make a state dump as - above. Then run these commands: +Q: Ferret crashed and I can't read my index. Luckily I made a state + dump. What should I do? +Q: How do I rebuild the index completely? +A: Run: rm -rf ~/.sup/ferret # omg wtf sup-sync --all-sources --all --restore Voila! A brand new index. @@ -77,44 +76,31 @@ Q: I want to move messages from one source to another. (E.g., my some of those messages to local mbox files.) How do I do that while preserving message state? A: Move the messages from the source to the target using whatever tool - you'd like. Then (and this is the important part), run: + you'd like. Mutt's a good one. :) Then run: sup-sync --changed - If you sup-sync only one source at a time, depending on the order, - the messages may be treated as missing and then deleted from the - index, which means that their states will be lost when you sync the - other source. + Note that if you sup-sync only one source at a time, depending on + the order in which you do it, the messages may be treated as + missing and then deleted from the index, which means that their + states will be lost when you sync the other source. So do them both + in one go. Q: What are all these "Redwood" references I see in the code? -A: That was Sup's original name. (Think pine, elm. Although I am a +A: That was Sup's original name. (Think pine, elm. Although I was a Mutt user, I couldn't think of a good progression there.) But it was - taken by another project on RubyForge, and wasn't that original, - and was too long to type anyways. - - Maybe one day I'll do a huge search-and-replace on the code, but it - doesn't seem that important at this point. - -Q: How is Sup possible? -A: Sup is only possible through the hard work of Dave Balmain, the - author of ferret, which is the search engine behind Sup. Ferret is - really a first-class piece of software, and it's due to the - tremendous amount of time and effort he's put in to it. + taken by another project on RubyForge, and wasn't that original, and + was too long to type anyways. Common Problems --------------- -P: I see this message from Ferret: - Error occured in index.c:825 - sis_find_segments_file -S: Yikes! You've upgraded Ferret and the index format changed beneath - you. Follow the index rebuild instructions above. - P: I get some error message from Rubymail about frozen strings when importing messages with attachments. S: The current solution is to directly modify RubyMail. Change line 159 of multipart.rb to: chunk = chunk[0..start] This is because RubyMail hasn't been updated since like Ruby 1.8.2. - Please bug Matt Lickey. + Please bug Matt Armstrong. P: I see this error: /usr/local/lib/ruby/1.8/yaml.rb:133:in `transfer': allocator undefined for Bignum (TypeError) @@ -125,13 +111,11 @@ P: I see this error: /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/net/imap.rb:204: uninitialized constant Net::IMAP::SSL (NameError) S: You need to install a package called libssl-ruby or something similar. Or, don't use imaps:// sources. Ruby's IMAP library otherwise fails in - this somewhat uninformative manner. + this completely uninformative manner. P: When I run Sup remotely and view an HTML attachment, an existing Firefox on the *local* machine is redirected to the attachment file, which it can't find (since it's on the remote machine). How do I view HTML attachments in this environment? - S: Put this in your ~/.mailcap on the machine you run Sup on: text/html; /usr/bin/firefox -a sup '%s'; description=HTML Text; test=test -n "$DISPLAY"; nametemplate=%s.html -