Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!helios!bcm!dimacs.rutgers.edu!seismo!uunet!kyle
From: kyle@uunet.UU.NET (Kyle Jones)
Newsgroups: comp.emacs
Subject: Re: Selectively setting backup mode
Message-ID: <120850@uunet.UU.NET>
Date: 1 Feb 91 22:08:18 GMT
References: <4347@archive.BBN.COM>
Organization: UUNET Communications Services, Falls Church, VA
Lines: 29

and@UX.RFHSM.LON.AC.UK (Andy Holyer) writes:
 > Guys, I've got a problem. my mail takes up about 1/2 as much space as
 > is left onthis disk partition. Therefore, when RMAIL does a save, it's
 > 50-50 whether the disk'll fill or not. The obvious answer is to stop
 > rmail making a backup file - it makes enough security copies as it is.
 > So, what's the neatest way to stop the file .rmail being backed up? I
 > know that to disable backups, you set the variable make-backup-files
 > to nil, but how do you make sure it's reset when you've finished? I've
 > got that to set the variable you make rmail-mode-hook equal to
 > (setq make-backup-files nil), but even that looks like a hack, and I
 > don't know of an rmail-exit-hook or whatever. Logic should suggest
 > that you can control backup behaviour for each buffer, but I can't
 > find out how to do that.

You need to make make-backup-files have a value that's local to
the RMAIL buffer.  I.e.

(setq rmail-mode-hook
      '(lambda ()
	 (make-local-variable 'make-backup-files)
	 (setq make-backup-files nil)))

 > 	Of course, the easy answer's to go over to vm, but vm seems
 > not to want to give me any headers when it displays a message... when
 > I've got the behaviour nailed down I'll post a report on it.

No headers?  I can believe that the message body isn't visible at
first.  That's called previewing and it's configurable.  Post to
gnu.emacs.vm.bug when you know more.