Introducing the Suffix

Mew has been ever using (sequence) numbers as file names for e-mail messages. An example is "123".

Mew 5 can handle e-mail messages whose file names are numbers plus the ".mew" suffix. An example is "123.mew".

They can co-exist. For instance, "123" and "123.mew" can exist in a folder. If there exist e-mail messages whose number parts are the same, the message with the suffix is superior. For example, if there are "123" and "123.mew" in a folder, "123.mew" is used.

If you set mew-use-suffix to t, newly stored e-mail messages will have the suffix.

(setq mew-use-suffix t)

The Reasons of the Introduction

The reason why we introduced the suffix is to let Mew 5 work with search functionality provided by OSes.

• For Windows, you can use Windows Desktop Search or Google Desktop. When they make an index of a file, they tell its data type according to its suffix. Thus, if an e-mail message does not have any suffix, an index for the file will not be made.

• Mac provides Spotlight. When Spotlight make an index of a file, it tell its data type according to either its suffix or its data type information in they file system. Bacause Emacs 22 can set a data type to a file, the suffix is not necessary for Emacs 22. Since Emacs 21 cannot set a data type to a file, the suffix is necessary for Emacs 21.

Transition

To add the suffix to the currently existing e-mail messages, you can use the "find". For Windows, please use the "find" command provided by Cygwin in the Cygwin environment.

First you should make a test as follows. Note that the e-mail messages are NOT modified.

% cd ~/Mail
% find . -type f -regex '^.*/[0-9]*$' -exec echo mv "{}" "{}.mew" \;

If you think OK, type the following to add the suffix to the e-mail messages.

% find . -type f -regex '^.*/[0-9]*$' -print -exec mv "{}" "{}.mew" \;

Also you can use the ruby script called mewsuffix.rb created by Mr. Kitaguchi. Of cource, you need to install Ruby, too.

To see what will happen, execute it in the test mode:

% ruby mewsuffix.rb -v -t ~/Mail

To add the suffix to the e-mail message, type as follow:

% ruby mewsuffix.rb ~/Mail

Using the Search Functionality from Mew

Please refer to the Search section of the Mew manual for usage.