[Techtalk] Using Evolution and Pine

[David Sumbler]

Mary Gardiner <mary-linuxchix at puzzling.org> writes:

> On Sun, Oct 29, 2006, David Sumbler wrote:
>> Does anyone know if any of the text-based e-mail clients, such as the
>> ones I have mentioned, are suitable to use in conjunction with
>> Evolution (but not at the same time, of course)?  Obviously their mail
>> file format needs to be the same as Evolution's, and I don't want one
>> program to screw things up for the other.
>
> I believe mutt and Evolution can both read the Maildir format. Honestly
> though, the most common way to get two different mail clients to share a
> mail account is to get them both to talk to it via IMAP which handles
> locking and such on the server.

Having made enquiries, I find that my ISP's IMAP server is not useful.

In the long term I might try to set up an IMAP server on my own
machine.

In the short term, I have installed Ubuntu 6.10, got my own network
settings sorted out (Ubuntu screwed it up!), and now have web access.

I then tried to set up Evolution to use the tree of files that
Procmail writes: e.g. Mail_folders/inbox, Mail_folders/spam.  These
are the files that Pine used to use (when I used Pine), and that Gnus
extracts messages from to put into its own folders.  I am hoping to
follow your suggestion and use Mutt or some such program in
conjunction with Evolution.

However, when I try to tell Evolution where to look for files, under
"Configuration" I see a pathetic little button which says "Path" and
displays about 4 other characters (usually "(..." or similar.  It is
impossible to see what it thinks the path is.  If I click on the
button, I get a file dialogue, which only has "Cancel" and "Open"
buttons, so I don't seem to be able to specify a directory, rather
than a file.  Perhaps I am being stupid, or perhaps it is because I am
not used to Gnome programs, but how do I persuade Evolution to use my
Procmail files as its own mail "folders"?

When it tries to check incoming mail, Evolution throws up an error
message, saying "Could not scan folder `//var/run/sudo': permission
denied", which I assume means that it is looking in / or /var for mail
- although I don't understand why there are two slashes in front of
'var'.

Any help will be very gratefully received!

David

-- 

david at aeolia.co.uk