From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Teemu Likonen Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: message-mode / mail-mode (was: Sending attachments) Date: Fri, 03 Jul 2009 10:44:18 +0300 Message-ID: <87bpo2i52l.fsf@iki.fi> References: <87vdmcnfkc.fsf@catnip.gol.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1246607908 20913 80.91.229.12 (3 Jul 2009 07:58:28 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 3 Jul 2009 07:58:28 +0000 (UTC) Cc: rms@gnu.org, emacs-devel@gnu.org To: Miles Bader Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Fri Jul 03 09:58:21 2009 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([199.232.76.165]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.50) id 1MMdew-0003Lw-I3 for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Fri, 03 Jul 2009 09:58:20 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1]:54570 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1MMdet-00085g-SG for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Fri, 03 Jul 2009 03:58:11 -0400 Original-Received: from mailman by lists.gnu.org with tmda-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1MMdRl-0004Uf-8E for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Fri, 03 Jul 2009 03:44:37 -0400 Original-Received: from exim by lists.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1MMdRg-0004Sc-Go for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Fri, 03 Jul 2009 03:44:36 -0400 Original-Received: from [199.232.76.173] (port=60991 helo=monty-python.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1MMdRg-0004SX-8k for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Fri, 03 Jul 2009 03:44:32 -0400 Original-Received: from mta-out.inet.fi ([195.156.147.13]:55836 helo=jenni2.inet.fi) by monty-python.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1MMdRb-0006V7-9O; Fri, 03 Jul 2009 03:44:27 -0400 Original-Received: from mithlond.arda.local (80.220.180.181) by jenni2.inet.fi (8.5.014) id 49F5CB6402615CFB; Fri, 3 Jul 2009 10:44:18 +0300 Original-Received: from dtw by mithlond.arda.local with local (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1MMdRS-0001Dz-3S; Fri, 03 Jul 2009 10:44:18 +0300 In-Reply-To: (Miles Bader's message of "Fri, 03 Jul 2009 11:37:34 +0900") User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/23.1.50 (gnu/linux) X-detected-operating-system: by monty-python.gnu.org: GNU/Linux 2.6 (newer, 3) X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Original-Sender: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:111938 Archived-At: On 2009-07-03 11:37 (+0900), Miles Bader wrote: > Do you have any technical (UI/interfaces/functionality/code-quality/etc) > objections to message-mode? Is the code ugly? Does it not work well > with rmail? Do you not like the name? You asked Richard but I'll voice my opinion or point anyway. I mostly use only Gnus and message-mode but there is (at least) one thing in mail-mode which is not very well supported in message-mode: editing raw mbox or mail files. Sometimes I need to edit raw mail/mbox files manually. Similar situation is composing a mail with a mail user agent like Mutt [1]. In message-mode there's command M-q (fill-paragraph) which works differently when cursor is in message's header and when it's on message's body. There's also C-a which is context sensitive, probably there are others. Context-sensitive commands are good but in message-mode they seem to require that the "--text follows this line--" separator line exists. This fact pretty much ties message-mode to only Emacs internal mail/news applications. If header and body is separated only by an empty line (which is the case with raw mail files) then message-mode's context-sensitive commands like M-q seem to always operate in "header mode". This makes M-q quite useless as it indents the second line of a paragraph with a TAB character. I wish there was just a simple mode for editing raw mail files. Just highlighting messages' headers and recognizing ">" as a comment char would suffice. Functions like sending mail don't make much sense with raw mail files. Currently mail-mode is a bit better on this area, perhaps because it's not too clever, I don't know. With Gnus message-mode is much better. --------------- 1. http://www.mutt.org/