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#### 6.6.3 Document Groups

`nndoc` is a cute little thing that will let you read a single file as a newsgroup. Several files types are supported:

`babyl`
  The Babyl format.

`mbox`
  The standard Unix mbox file.

`mmdf`
  The MMDF mail box format.
`news`
  Several news articles appended into a file.

`rnews`
  The rnews batch transport format.
`nsmail`
  Netscape mail boxes.
`mime-parts`
  MIME multipart messages.
`standard-digest`
  The standard (RFC 1153) digest format.
`mime-digest`
  A MIME digest of messages.
`lanl-gov-announce`
  Announcement messages from LANL Gov Announce.

`git`
  `git` commit messages.

`rfc822-forward`
  A message forwarded according to RFC822.
`outlook`
  The Outlook mail box.
`oe-dbx`
  The Outlook Express dbx mail box.
`exim-bounce`
  A bounce message from the Exim MTA.
`forward`
  A message forwarded according to informal rules.
`rfc934`
  An RFC934-forwarded message.
`mailman`
  A mailman digest.
`clari-briefs`
  A digest of Clarinet brief news items.
`slack-digest`
  Non-standard digest format—matches most things, but does it badly.
`mail-in-mail`
  The last resort.

You can also use the special “file type” `guess`, which means that `nndoc` will try to guess what file type it is looking at. `digest` means that `nndoc` should guess what digest type the file is.

`nndoc` will not try to change the file or insert any extra headers into it—it will simply, like, let you use the file as the basis for a group. And that's it.

If you have some old archived articles that you want to insert into your new & spiffy Gnus mail back end, `nndoc` can probably help you with that. Say you have an old `RMAIL` file with mail that you now want to split into your new `nnml` groups. You look at that file using `nndoc` (using the `G f` command in the group buffer (see Foreign Groups)), set the process mark on all the articles in the buffer (`M P b`, for instance), and then re-spool (`B r`) using `nnml`. If all goes well, all the mail in the `RMAIL` file is now also stored in lots of `nnml` directories, and you can delete that pesky `RMAIL` file. If you have the guts!

Virtual server variables:

`nndoc-article-type`
  This should be one of `mbox`, `babyl`, `digest`, `news`, `rnews`, `mmdf`, `forward`, `rfc934`, `rfc822-forward`, `mime-parts`, `standard-digest`, `slack-digest`, `clari-briefs`, `nsmail`, `outlook`, `oe-dbx`, `mailman`, and `mail-in-mail` or `guess`.
`nndoc-post-type`
  This variable says whether Gnus is to consider the group a news group or a mail group. There are two valid values: `mail` (the default) and `news`.