Explain nnmail-split-fancy-with-parent.

2 files changed, 39 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/man/ChangeLog b/man/ChangeLog
index f1d16d4bdf..7b283daab9 100644
--- a/man/ChangeLog
+++ b/man/ChangeLog
@@ -1,3 +1,8 @@
+2000-11-01  Kai Gro,A_(Bjohann  <[email protected]>
+
+	* gnus.texi (Fancy Mail Splitting): Explain
+	`nnmail-split-fancy-with-parent'.
+
 2000-10-29  Michael Kifer  <[email protected]>
 	
 	* ediff.texi: Replaced @command with @code & acknowledgements.
diff --git a/man/gnus.texi b/man/gnus.texi
index b786d56d08..e4187f81c9 100644
--- a/man/gnus.texi
+++ b/man/gnus.texi
@@ -11731,6 +11731,40 @@ matched string will be substituted.  Similarly, the elements @samp{\\1}
 up to @samp{\\9} will be substituted with the text matched by the
 groupings 1 through 9.
 
+@findex nnmail-split-fancy-with-parent
+@code{nnmail-split-fancy-with-parent} is a function which allows you to
+split followups into the same groups their parents are in.  Sometimes
+you can't make splitting rules for all your mail.  For example, your
+boss might send you personal mail regarding different projects you are
+working on, and as you can't tell your boss to put a distinguishing
+string into the subject line, you have to resort to manually moving the
+messages into the right group.  With this function, you only have to do
+it once per thread.
+
+To use this feature, you have to set @code{nnmail-treat-duplicates} to a
+non-nil value.  And then you can include
+@code{nnmail-split-fancy-with-parent} using the colon feature, like so:
+@lisp
+(setq nnmail-split-fancy
+      '(| (: nnmail-split-fancy-with-parent)
+          ;; other splits go here
+        ))
+@end lisp
+
+This feature works as follows: when @code{nnmail-treat-duplicates} is
+non-nil, Gnus records the message id of every message it sees in the
+file specified by the variable @code{nnmail-message-id-cache-file},
+together with the group it is in (the group is omitted for non-mail
+messages).  When mail splitting is invoked, the function
+@code{nnmail-split-fancy-with-parent} then looks at the References (and
+In-Reply-To) header of each message to split and searches the file
+specified by @code{nnmail-message-id-cache-file} for the message ids.
+When it has found a parent, it returns the corresponding group name.  It
+is recommended that you set @code{nnmail-message-id-cache-length} to a
+somewhat higher number than the default so that the message ids are
+still in the cache.  (A value of 5000 appears to create a file some
+300 kBytes in size.)
+
 
 @node Group Mail Splitting
 @subsection Group Mail Splitting