[VM] Unreadable VM-mail folders

[Dr. Rainer Woitok]

Greetings,

does anybody have some pointers regarding the following problem?

Environment: 1: vm 7.17 with XEmacs 21.4.19 on Solaris
2: vm 7.17 with XEmacs 21.4.22 under Cygwin on Vista

Problem: On the Solaris host I maintain a bunch of VM-mail folders, and
"vm" doesn't have any problems displaying them. However, when I
transfer some of these folders to my Vista laptop using, for instance,
Mercurial, that is, without converting "\n" to "\r\n", "vm" under Cygwin
sees fewer mails in some of these folders, while XEmacs doesn't have any
problems to open these files and read them in their entirety. At least
in some cases the last mail displayed by Cygwin's "vm" was a MIME
message with a multi-part body, but I don't know if this is of any
significance.

However, when I hit "D" twice while displaying the last message in the
"vm" under Cygwin, I can see that all the remaining mails are in fact
catenated to this last mail, with the "

[Uday S Reddy]

Post by Dr. Rainer Woitok
Greetings,
does anybody have some pointers regarding the following problem?
Environment: 1: vm 7.17 with XEmacs 21.4.19 on Solaris
2: vm 7.17 with XEmacs 21.4.22 under Cygwin on Vista

Are you sure you are using VM 7.17? It is very very old. The info file
says it was released on 6th July, 2003!

At a minimum, you should upgrade to VM 7.19, which is still available on the
Wonderworks web site. Some of these problems could have been fixed there.

In due course, you might also want to upgrade to the current public release
of VM, available at http://www.nongnu.org/viewmail/.

(Warning: Every time you upgrade, you need to look through the NEWS file to
see whether there are any changes that affect you.)

Post by Dr. Rainer Woitok
Problem: On the Solaris host I maintain a bunch of VM-mail folders, and
"vm" doesn't have any problems displaying them. However, when I
transfer some of these folders to my Vista laptop using, for instance,
Mercurial, that is, without converting "\n" to "\r\n", "vm" under Cygwin
sees fewer mails in some of these folders, while XEmacs doesn't have any
problems to open these files and read them in their entirety. At least
in some cases the last mail displayed by Cygwin's "vm" was a MIME
message with a multi-part body, but I don't know if this is of any
significance.

Emacs and VM can work with both "\n" files and "\r\n" files, independent of
which operating system they are running on. But if you intermix "\n"
messages and "\r\n" messages, then Emacs and VM won't be able to handle
them.

You can use dos2unix and unix2dos programs, available on Cygwin, to clean
the line-endings.

Post by Dr. Rainer Woitok
However, when I hit "D" twice while displaying the last message in the
"vm" under Cygwin, I can see that all the remaining mails are in fact
catenated to this last mail, with the "

[Dr. Rainer Woitok]

Uday,

Post by Uday S Reddy
...
Are you sure you are using VM 7.17?

Well, at least that's what "C-h v vm-version" is telling me.

Post by Uday S Reddy
...
At a minimum, you should upgrade to VM 7.19, which is still available on the
Wonderworks web site. Some of these problems could have been fixed there.

While I could easily do this on my laptop, I'm not the guy who decides
what is upgraded when and to which version on the Solaris box on which I
really do my e-mail. So I somehow HAVE to live with that version there.

Post by Uday S Reddy
...
The
mbox format requires at least one blank line before the "

[Uday Reddy]

Post by Dr. Rainer Woitok

Post by Uday S Reddy
At a minimum, you should upgrade to VM 7.19, which is still available on the
Wonderworks web site. Some of these problems could have been fixed there.

While I could easily do this on my laptop, I'm not the guy who decides
what is upgraded when and to which version on the Solaris box on which I
really do my e-mail. So I somehow HAVE to live with that version there.

Not necessarily. VM 7.19 should be available as a single .elc file that
doesn't need any installation. All you would need to do is to download it
and place it somewhere where Emacs will find it (i.e., on some directory on
the load-path).

The current versions of VM can also be installed in your own private
directories, and don't need support from the system staff.

Post by Dr. Rainer Woitok
Hm, that's exactly what my "vm" under Solaris is NOT doing when I enter
"s folder" in "vm". The mail (and the folder file) is terminated with a
single "\n", except for the cases where the original mail already
contains trailing "\n" characters.

Sounds like a good reason to dump VM 7.17 and upgrade to 7.19 as soon as
possible!

Cheers,
Uday