I appreciate the input, but did not understand how to make my case work.
Thank you to those who responded so unselfishly.   I thought I would now
dredge up the thread to redirect this, and a couple of other questions
about email.

All I want it a copy of my outgoing email and threads thereof (I use Gmail)
to be present on my system, so I can search easily.   I discovered the
variable "message-send-rename function" which should make it relatively
easy to set something up.  I envision recovering the name of the recipient
from the first lines of the message, or else just using the email address
as a postfix to save the message in a certain directory, easily accessible
from org-mode.

Incidentally, the function "oog" was useful to me for a long time, but for
a long while I have been unable to use it.  Everytime the following message
is typed out in the minibuffer:  Wrong type argument: markerp, nil.

Another recent issue for me was that my message buffer wasn't saved, when
an unusual event happend on my Arch Linux box, using openbox window
manager: emacs locked up, when I was editing a message.  It was a long
letter related to an employment application, and, as far as I've been able
to discover, it was not autosaved at any time duirng the editing of this
message (an your or two.)   Unusual, especially when I not that an autosave
directory has been enabled for messages, by default.

I would like to ask whether someone who understands email can give some
advice about these three issues?

Alan



On Thu, Oct 3, 2013 at 9:05 AM, Eric S Fraga <e.fraga@ucl.ac.uk> wrote:

> Suvayu Ali <fatkasuvayu+linux@gmail.com> writes:
>
> > On Wed, Oct 02, 2013 at 11:24:18AM -0700, Josiah Schwab wrote:
> >> Hi Alan,
> >>
> >
> >> > I am happy to use native emacs mail, for sending email.  What I want
> to be
> >> > able to do is keep a copy of my email in an org-mode file.
> >>
> >> Taking a step back, is there a reason that you want to keep a copy of
> >> the email contents in the org file, as opposed to including a link to
> >> the email message?
> >
> > I would ask the same question.  Specially when Org supports so many URI
> > schemes for emails: gnus, mhe, rmail, notmuch, vm, vm-imap, wl.  Even
> > simple file links to maildirs would work too.  If you like the Gmail web
> > interface, linking to that is also possible!
>
> or, to turn it around completely, what about defining an org backend
> for gnus, i.e. nnorg, which stores emails using org format, modelled
> along the nnmbox backend [[info:(gnus) Unix Mail Box]]?  You could then
> use the GCC gnus header.
>
> only partly in jest... ;-)
>
> --
> : Eric S Fraga (0xFFFCF67D), Emacs 24.3.50.1, Org release_8.1.1-7-gaecdf5
>
>
>