Re: What are advantages and disadvantages of RMAIL and mh-rmail ?

[William G. Gardella <wgg2-IGUgQLVVQiRCV4ILt04nZQ@public.gmane.org>]

Emanuel Berg <embe8573-oe7qfRrRQfc4M/bo5TPICw@public.gmane.org> writes:

> wgreenhouse-sGOZH3hwPm2sTnJN9+BGXg@public.gmane.org (W. Greenhouse) writes:
>
>> With MH-E you have the option of using the MH
>> implementation's command line tools to manipulate your
>> mail ...
>
> 100% correct, and that is a great advantage. If you go
> from a web mail service, be it Hotmail or even
> Gmail... -- to experience this transition is a *dream*!
>
>> Or, you can use Gnus as read-mail-command instead of
>> either of these, which is my own preference.
>
> How do you do that? It was very easy to setup RMAIL, I
> think below 30 minutes, but every time I see some
> tutorial about mail in Gnus it seems it requires hours
> of hacking (?).

That's because a lot of the tutorials suffer from bitrot; timeliness in
wiki pages and blog posts is a real problem, especially since software
configuration advice necessarily changes over time.

To set up Gnus for locally delivered mail (similar to how you'd use
RMAIL or MH-E, with system MTA/MDA facilities routing the mail to your
inbox, and the system MTA sending mail) is a very brief configuration.
Something like this is all that's really needed for this:

(setq gnus-secondary-select-methods
      '((nnml "")) ;; This is similar to an MH mail store, with the
                   ;; addition of news-server-like "news overview" files
                   ;; that make the summary buffer's display faster.
      message-send-mail-function 'message-sendmail-send-it
      mail-user-agent 'gnus-user-agent ;; `compose-mail' and related
                                       ;;  commands will use
                                       ;;  message-mode with full Gnus features
      read-mail-command 'gnus) ;; Clicking on the "Mail" flag in
                               ;; display-time-mode launches gnus
                               ;; instead of RMAIL
      
I use a setup similar to this, with the addition of other
`gnus-secondary-select-methods' elements corresponding to my IMAP
mailboxes.  It is very nice seeing everything in one coherent interface.

> I use Gnus for Usenet and RMAIL for mails. But sometimes
> I get both Usenet posts *and* mails (with the same
> contents) as is often the case for this group, for
> example, so it is not optimal. Also, the "one big file"
> solution for RMAIL is not good.

Gnus offers a number of file-based mail backends.  See (info "(gnus)
Choosing a Mail Back End").

> What's more, why shouldn't you use Gnus (or your
> favourite newsreader) for mail, as well? I use message
> mode for both (this required some minor hacks), and
> there seems to be noting separating them apart from the
> broadcast character of Usenet (but that can be
> implemented as a listbot as well, so again I see almost
> no difference).

Indeed, for Gnus an "article" is an article, regardless of how it was
delivered :)  That abstraction has certain nice advantages (e.g. Gnus
can let you use score files and killfiles for mail as well as news).

-- 
Finally, Zippy drives his 1958 RAMBLER METROPOLITAN into the faculty
dining room.