Alternatives to Gnus

Alternatives to Gnus

[Francis Moreau]

Hello,

After more than 2 years of gnus daily usage, I've finally decided to
give up :(: too much pain, too much trouble, too much complex, too
slow and too much wasted time. Gnus has definitively not been designed
for me.

So I'd like to find something else to use (and I'm sure it should
exist because I'm pretty convinced that I'm not the only one in this
case) to read my emails and news groups.

I started to use Gnus because I run emacs in terminal mode and I want
to do so when reading my emails/articles. I also want to use emacs to
compose them.

From my point of view, the most important features are: stability/
robustness, speed and last but not the least usability. I think
Thunderbird has them but unfortunately it doesn't have a terminal mode
and can't use emacs in terminal mode to compose emails (yes it can
with emacs in window mode but it's quite hackish).

Could the emacs users give me some alternatives ?

Thanks

Re: Alternatives to Gnus

[Thorsten Bonow]

>>>>> "Francis" == Francis Moreau <francis.moro@gmail.com> writes:

    [...]  

    Francis> Could the emacs users give me some alternatives ?

Hi,

I use Mew for mailing only (and GNUS for news), but it supports news. I love
it, because it's rock solid, feature rich, supported and blends well into GNU
Emacs.

I quote from http://www.mew.org/en/.

Toto

"Mew is a user interface for text messages, multimedia messages (MIME),
news articles and security functionality including PGP, S/MIME, SSH,
and SSL. Also, Mew can work with the recent search services.

Mew is an acronym for "Messaging in the Emacs World". You should spell
it with the first letter capitalized and pronounce it as it is
(i.e. the meow of cats). When the author started programming it, he
chose a cute word from his English dictionary. Thus, Mew."

-- 
Put the word "implement" in your resume and you won't get phoned
back. Douglas Coupland: JPod

Re: Alternatives to Gnus

[Rafael]

Francis Moreau <francis.moro@gmail.com> writes:

> Could the emacs users give me some alternatives ?

I could suggest either the web browser Conkeror, or Wanderlust in
Emacs. Myself, I wanted to switch to Wanderlust, but in the end I'm
going to stick with Gnus, since despite its disadvantages I did not want
to waste all the acquired knowledge obtained over several years.

Re: Alternatives to Gnus

[Francis Moreau]

On Sep 1, 8:31 pm, Rafael <rvf0...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Francis Moreau <francis.m...@gmail.com> writes:
> > Could the emacs users give me some alternatives ?
>
> I could suggest either the web browser Conkeror, or Wanderlust in
> Emacs.

Hmm, not sure how they can help since I'm looking for a mails/news
reader.

> Myself, I wanted to switch to Wanderlust, but in the end I'm
> going to stick with Gnus, since despite its disadvantages I did not want
> to waste all the acquired knowledge obtained over several years.

Well, this is mainly the reason why I used gnus for more than 2 years
but I think it's a very _bad_ reason.

I recently have to configure Thunderbird and it took me less than 15
mins to configure 3 IMAP mailboxes, and to subscribe to a couple of
news group, configure the threaded view, doing some searches,
archiving some articles etc... guess how long it took me to do the
same with Gnus ? :(

Re: Alternatives to Gnus

[Francis Moreau]

On Sep 1, 8:17 pm, Thorsten Bonow <thorsten.bo...@withouthat.org>
wrote:
> >>>>> "Francis" == Francis Moreau <francis.m...@gmail.com> writes:
>
>     [...]  
>
>     Francis> Could the emacs users give me some alternatives ?
>
> Hi,
>
> I use Mew for mailing only (and GNUS for news), but it supports news.

I didn't know that Mew has news support.

Why don't you use Mew for both mails and news ?

> I love
> it, because it's rock solid, feature rich, supported and blends well into GNU
> Emacs.
>

Is it well supported ?

Is it fast ?

Thanks

Re: Alternatives to Gnus

[Thorsten Bonow]

>>>>> "Francis" == Francis Moreau <francis.moro@gmail.com> writes:

    Francis> On Sep 1, 8:17 pm, Thorsten Bonow <thorsten.bo...@withouthat.org>
    Francis> wrote:

    [...]

    Francis> Why don't you use Mew for both mails and news ?

I do nothing fancy with GNUS, it just works for me. Up to now, if I had some
time on my hands, I always found something more important to learn or configure
about my Linux box and GNU Emacs.

    >> I love it, because it's rock solid, feature rich, supported and blends
    >> well into GNU Emacs.

    Francis> Is it well supported ?

Activily developed for ages.

    Francis> Is it fast ?

I haven't bought a new computer since 1999, I like tinkering with old ones. Mew
is fairly fast on my box over here (Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 2.66GHz).

    Francis> Thanks

Hope this helps...

Toto

-- 
"No amount of googling and copying and pasting can replace the intellectual
flexibility developed by reading whole books."  Alan Gibbons (The Observer,
23.11.08: 'Top authors say books beat googling' by Liz Lightfoot)

Re: Alternatives to Gnus

[Tim X]

Francis Moreau <francis.moro@gmail.com> writes:

> Hello,
>
> After more than 2 years of gnus daily usage, I've finally decided to
> give up :(: too much pain, too much trouble, too much complex, too
> slow and too much wasted time. Gnus has definitively not been designed
> for me.
>
> So I'd like to find something else to use (and I'm sure it should
> exist because I'm pretty convinced that I'm not the only one in this
> case) to read my emails and news groups.
>
> I started to use Gnus because I run emacs in terminal mode and I want
> to do so when reading my emails/articles. I also want to use emacs to
> compose them.
>
> From my point of view, the most important features are: stability/
> robustness, speed and last but not the least usability. I think
> Thunderbird has them but unfortunately it doesn't have a terminal mode
> and can't use emacs in terminal mode to compose emails (yes it can
> with emacs in window mode but it's quite hackish).
>
> Could the emacs users give me some alternatives ?
>

I'm not convinced that there are any huge advantages in having the same
program to both read/send/manage email and read/send/manage news. I use
gnus for newsgroups and think its really good at that. I tried it for
mail, but to be honest, found it less so. I therefore use VM and Mew for
reading mail.  

Mew also supports reading news, but I've never used it for that. 

I am a member of the VM developer team. VM is an excellent mail reader
with a lot of power/flexibility, which has been around for a long time.
After it's original developer moved on to other things, it did languish
a bit. However, since last year, a number of people have been working on
it to update it and integrate many of the add on features that have been
contributed by various people. Development is very active and a number
of enhancements have been added over the last few months, including
improved imap integration, better threading, performance improvements
for large mail files, thunderbird support and many other improvements.
There is still a lot to be done, but if your after a stable mail reader
which is under actie development with people who will respond to
questions and bug reports etc, it is worth looking at. We would
appreciate having more users who run under the console rather than GUI. 

The sources are available on launchpad http://launchpad.net/vm

Tim



-- 
tcross (at) rapttech dot com dot au

Re: Alternatives to Gnus

[Francis Moreau]

On Sep 2, 12:31 am, Tim X <t...@nospam.dev.null> wrote:
> Francis Moreau <francis.m...@gmail.com> writes:
> > Could the emacs users give me some alternatives ?
>
> I'm not convinced that there are any huge advantages in having the same
> program to both read/send/manage email and read/send/manage news.

Well a common interface: less key bindings, one config file etc...

> I use
> gnus for newsgroups and think its really good at that. I tried it for

I don't agree obviously.

> mail, but to be honest, found it less so. I therefore use VM and Mew for
> reading mail.

Why are you using both of them ?

>
> Mew also supports reading news, but I've never used it for that.
>

I took a quick look at its documentation and I haven't seen any news
reading support.

Is it well supported in Mew or is it something like using gnus for
emails ?

> I am a member of the VM developer team. VM is an excellent mail reader
> with a lot of power/flexibility, which has been around for a long time.
> After it's original developer moved on to other things, it did languish
> a bit. However, since last year, a number of people have been working on
> it to update it and integrate many of the add on features that have been
> contributed by various people. Development is very active and a number
> of enhancements have been added over the last few months, including
> improved imap integration, better threading, performance improvements
> for large mail files, thunderbird support and many other improvements.

Ok that sounds interesting but it leaves the question about the news
reader open.

> There is still a lot to be done, but if your after a stable mail reader
> which is under actie development with people who will respond to
> questions and bug reports etc, it is worth looking at. We would
> appreciate having more users who run under the console rather than GUI.
>

That's definitively a good point, and it one of the main reasons I'm
leaving gnus. I often felt lonely when I was hit by the numerous
issues I had with Gnus.

Thanks

Re: Alternatives to Gnus

[Tim X]

Francis Moreau <francis.moro@gmail.com> writes:

> On Sep 2, 12:31 am, Tim X <t...@nospam.dev.null> wrote:
>> Francis Moreau <francis.m...@gmail.com> writes:
>> > Could the emacs users give me some alternatives ?
>>
>> I'm not convinced that there are any huge advantages in having the same
>> program to both read/send/manage email and read/send/manage news.
>
> Well a common interface: less key bindings, one config file etc...

IMO the common interface is emacs and the common configuration file is
.emacs

My point re: advantages is that the similarity between news and mail
is really only surface deep. How I want to manage the messages, the type
of filtering I do, where things are stored etc are quite different. I've
found it rare that one program does both well - you tend to either have
news being forced into a mail type paradigm or mail being forced into a
news type one.

I prefer the right tool for the right job. Gnus was written primarily as
an nntp client and mail was (I think) a secondary goal. Mew appears to
be primarily a mail user agent with nntp as a secondary goal.

>
>> I use
>> gnus for newsgroups and think its really good at that. I tried it for
>
> I don't agree obviously.
>
>> mail, but to be honest, found it less so. I therefore use VM and Mew for
>> reading mail.
>
> Why are you using both of them ?
>
Because I am on the VM development team. Sometimes, while fixing bugs or
adding features, my copy of VM may not be stable, but I need to maintain
a stable environment. I also like to have another mail reader available
for comparison purposes. 

>>
>> Mew also supports reading news, but I've never used it for that.
>>
>
> I took a quick look at its documentation and I haven't seen any news
> reading support.
>
> Is it well supported in Mew or is it something like using gnus for
> emails ?

as I said, I've never used it for news, so I cannot say.

Tim


>
>> I am a member of the VM developer team. VM is an excellent mail reader
>> with a lot of power/flexibility, which has been around for a long time.
>> After it's original developer moved on to other things, it did languish
>> a bit. However, since last year, a number of people have been working on
>> it to update it and integrate many of the add on features that have been
>> contributed by various people. Development is very active and a number
>> of enhancements have been added over the last few months, including
>> improved imap integration, better threading, performance improvements
>> for large mail files, thunderbird support and many other improvements.
>
> Ok that sounds interesting but it leaves the question about the news
> reader open.
>
>> There is still a lot to be done, but if your after a stable mail reader
>> which is under actie development with people who will respond to
>> questions and bug reports etc, it is worth looking at. We would
>> appreciate having more users who run under the console rather than GUI.
>>
>
> That's definitively a good point, and it one of the main reasons I'm
> leaving gnus. I often felt lonely when I was hit by the numerous
> issues I had with Gnus.
>
> Thanks

-- 
tcross (at) rapttech dot com dot au

Re: Alternatives to Gnus

[Francis Moreau]

On Sep 2, 11:51 am, Tim X <t...@nospam.dev.null> wrote:
> Francis Moreau <francis.m...@gmail.com> writes:
> > On Sep 2, 12:31 am, Tim X <t...@nospam.dev.null> wrote:
> >> Francis Moreau <francis.m...@gmail.com> writes:
> >> > Could the emacs users give me some alternatives ?
>
> >> I'm not convinced that there are any huge advantages in having the same
> >> program to both read/send/manage email and read/send/manage news.
>
> > Well a common interface: less key bindings, one config file etc...
>
> IMO the common interface is emacs and the common configuration file is
> .emacs
>
> My point re: advantages is that the similarity between news and mail
> is really only surface deep. How I want to manage the messages, the type
> of filtering I do, where things are stored etc are quite different. I've
> found it rare that one program does both well - you tend to either have
> news being forced into a mail type paradigm or mail being forced into a
> news type one.

Actually I've never found weird to have mail being handled like news,
and that's not what forced me to leave gnus.

> > Why are you using both of them ?
>
> Because I am on the VM development team. Sometimes, while fixing bugs or
> adding features, my copy of VM may not be stable, but I need to maintain
> a stable environment.

Does that mean that there's no VM stable release out there ? ;)

> I also like to have another mail reader available
> for comparison purposes.

Ok.

Re: Alternatives to Gnus

[Francis Moreau]

On Sep 2, 2:07 pm, Jeff Clough <j...@chaosphere.com> wrote:
> Francis Moreau <francis.m...@gmail.com> writes:
> >> Mew also supports reading news, but I've never used it for that.
>
> > I took a quick look at its documentation and I haven't seen any news
> > reading support.
>
> > Is it well supported in Mew or is it something like using gnus for
> > emails ?
>
> In my use of Mew I found only a passing mention to nntp in a random
> section of the reference manual, but no documentation as to how to
> actually read news with it or any claim that it did so.
>
> As for how "well supported" it is, that will depend on your definition.

I mean, something that is actively maintained and enhanced. And has
also a pretty big users community.

> There's a mailing list but it gets very little traffic, and I've seen
> some questions/comments go unanswered by the maintainer for two or three
> weeks.  That said, the manual on the Mew site is great, gives you all
> the information you need in one place and the software will take about
> fifteen minutes to set up.
>
> Mew ultimately didn't meet my needs,

Why not ?

Re: Alternatives to Gnus

[Jeff Clough]

Francis Moreau <francis.moro@gmail.com> writes:

> I mean, something that is actively maintained and enhanced. And has
> also a pretty big users community.

I think my original paragraph below sums it up.  And given the user base
of Gnus, I'm not sure I'd describe any alternative as having "a pretty
big users community".

>> There's a mailing list but it gets very little traffic, and I've seen
>> some questions/comments go unanswered by the maintainer for two or three
>> weeks.  That said, the manual on the Mew site is great, gives you all
>> the information you need in one place and the software will take about
>> fifteen minutes to set up.
>>
>> Mew ultimately didn't meet my needs,
>
> Why not ?

Well, part of it was the lack of news.  Or, at least, any obvious
indication that Mew actually does news.  The rest boil down to
wanting/needing a larger feature set and having a more "hack-friendly"
package.  With Gnus, it's highly likely that any feature or ability you
want is already there.  With Mew, it's likely not and the code doesn't
(in my opinion) lend itself well to tinkering with.

Again, just my opinion.  Mew may work fine for you as a MUA.

Jeff

-- 
web:  http://www.chaosphere.com
Author of Genesys, a Free Universal Paper and Pencil RPG.
http://www.chaosphere.com/genesys/

Re: Alternatives to Gnus

[Francis Moreau]

On Sep 2, 5:42 pm, Jeff Clough <j...@chaosphere.com> wrote:
> Francis Moreau <francis.m...@gmail.com> writes:
> > I mean, something that is actively maintained and enhanced. And has
> > also a pretty big users community.
>
> I think my original paragraph below sums it up.  And given the user base
> of Gnus, I'm not sure I'd describe any alternative as having "a pretty
> big users community".

Really ?

Still I'm subscribed to gnus news group and I wouldn't call it a busy/
active one.

Re: Alternatives to Gnus

[Ted Zlatanov]

On Thu, 2 Sep 2010 13:54:47 -0700 (PDT) Francis Moreau <francis.moro@gmail.com> wrote: 

FM> Still I'm subscribed to gnus news group and I wouldn't call it a busy/
FM> active one.

Without Reiner and Kai around, it's been pretty quiet (and I've been
unable to make time to answer quickly).  They used to answer a huge
amount of mail--a difficult job, which takes a lot of time.  Most people
seem to use the Ding Mailing List <ding@gnus.org> instead of the
newsgroup in any case (available over NNTP as gmane.emacs.gnus.general
from GMane).

Ted

Re: Alternatives to Gnus

[Tim X]

Francis Moreau <francis.moro@gmail.com> writes:

> On Sep 2, 11:51 am, Tim X <t...@nospam.dev.null> wrote:
>> Francis Moreau <francis.m...@gmail.com> writes:
>> > On Sep 2, 12:31 am, Tim X <t...@nospam.dev.null> wrote:
>> >> Francis Moreau <francis.m...@gmail.com> writes:
>> >> > Could the emacs users give me some alternatives ?
>>
>> >> I'm not convinced that there are any huge advantages in having the same
>> >> program to both read/send/manage email and read/send/manage news.
>>
>> > Well a common interface: less key bindings, one config file etc...
>>
>> IMO the common interface is emacs and the common configuration file is
>> .emacs
>>
>> My point re: advantages is that the similarity between news and mail
>> is really only surface deep. How I want to manage the messages, the type
>> of filtering I do, where things are stored etc are quite different. I've
>> found it rare that one program does both well - you tend to either have
>> news being forced into a mail type paradigm or mail being forced into a
>> news type one.
>
> Actually I've never found weird to have mail being handled like news,
> and that's not what forced me to leave gnus.
>
>> > Why are you using both of them ?
>>
>> Because I am on the VM development team. Sometimes, while fixing bugs or
>> adding features, my copy of VM may not be stable, but I need to maintain
>> a stable environment.
>
> Does that mean that there's no VM stable release out there ? ;)
>

No. VM has been around for nearly 20 years. The VM development team work
hard to ensure stability in released versions. As with all software, the
current head of the development tree is not guaranteed to be as stable
as the last released version, though in reality, like the development
version of emacs itself, it tends to be very stable. In 15 years of use,
I have had two occasions when VM has currupted my mail file. Both of
these were due to changes in emacs itself that either caused bugs in VM
or revealed a bug that was revealed by changes in emacs. This is normal
and is why we only attempt to maintain compatibility with the last few
versions of emacs (currently emacs 21 or later and XEmacs 21.2 or
later). Of course, if you are someone who is working on enhancements and
bug fixes, then the version you are modifying can become unstable, but
as we don't check changes into version control until we have at least
some confidence the changes are reasonably stable, non-developers don't
see this instability.

Tim

-- 
tcross (at) rapttech dot com dot au

Re: Alternatives to Gnus

[Francis Moreau]

Hello Ted,

On 3 sep, 00:28, Ted Zlatanov <t...@lifelogs.com> wrote:
> On Thu, 2 Sep 2010 13:54:47 -0700 (PDT) Francis Moreau <francis.m...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> FM> Still I'm subscribed to gnus news group and I wouldn't call it a busy/
> FM> active one.
>
> Without Reiner and Kai around, it's been pretty quiet (and I've been
> unable to make time to answer quickly).  They used to answer a huge
> amount of mail--a difficult job, which takes a lot of time.

Yeah, I noticed that you're the most active helpers on this news
group, and thank all of you.

But I reached the point where I'm not confident when using gnus
anymore since I have so many open questions or so many weird behaviour
I can't explain.

>  Most people
> seem to use the Ding Mailing List <d...@gnus.org> instead of the
> newsgroup in any case (available over NNTP as gmane.emacs.gnus.general
> from GMane).

Well, I'm pretty sure about the answers I would have if I posted a
users' questions to this mailing list: "guy, this is not the place for
(dumb) user questions, please use the gnus news group for this".

Thanks

Re: Alternatives to Gnus

[Francis Moreau]

On 3 sep, 00:37, Tim X <t...@nospam.dev.null> wrote:
>
> > Does that mean that there's no VM stable release out there ? ;)
>
> No. VM has been around for nearly 20 years. The VM development team work
> hard to ensure stability in released versions. As with all software, the

[...]

I was just kidding (note the smiley) about your setup:

   devel environement  -> VM
   stable environement -> Mew

Re: Alternatives to Gnus

[Ted Zlatanov]

On Fri, 3 Sep 2010 00:01:06 -0700 (PDT) Francis Moreau <francis.moro@gmail.com> wrote: 

FM> But I reached the point where I'm not confident when using gnus
FM> anymore since I have so many open questions or so many weird behaviour
FM> I can't explain.

Yeah.  I looked at your questions and you are having some very strange
problems.  FWIW I've never experienced what you did, though I know that
doesn't help.  

FM> Well, I'm pretty sure about the answers I would have if I posted a
FM> users' questions to [the Ding] mailing list: "guy, this is not the
FM> place for (dumb) user questions, please use the gnus news group for
FM> this".

Nah, it's never been like that.

Ted

Re: Alternatives to Gnus

[Francis Moreau]

On 3 sep, 15:06, Ted Zlatanov <t...@lifelogs.com> wrote:
> On Fri, 3 Sep 2010 00:01:06 -0700 (PDT) Francis Moreau <francis.m...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> FM> But I reached the point where I'm not confident when using gnus
> FM> anymore since I have so many open questions or so many weird behaviour
> FM> I can't explain.
>
> Yeah.  I looked at your questions and you are having some very strange
> problems.

Yeah, that's my cup of tea when using Gnus ;)

>
> FM> Well, I'm pretty sure about the answers I would have if I posted a
> FM> users' questions to [the Ding] mailing list: "guy, this is not the
> FM> place for (dumb) user questions, please use the gnus news group for
> FM> this".
>
> Nah, it's never been like that.

OK, so I suggest to close gnus news group and to keep only one place
(the ding mainling list) where users can have a greater chance to get
their problems solved.

Thanks

Re: Alternatives to Gnus

[Ted Zlatanov]

On Fri, 3 Sep 2010 12:50:26 -0700 (PDT) Francis Moreau <francis.moro@gmail.com> wrote: 

FM> OK, so I suggest to close gnus news group and to keep only one place
FM> (the ding mainling list) where users can have a greater chance to get
FM> their problems solved.

I think the problem is volunteer labor for answering hard,
time-consuming questions, not the newsgroup itself.

Ted

Re: Alternatives to Gnus

[Francis Moreau]

On Sep 7, 6:04 pm, Ted Zlatanov <t...@lifelogs.com> wrote:
> On Fri, 3 Sep 2010 12:50:26 -0700 (PDT) Francis Moreau <francis.m...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> FM> OK, so I suggest to close gnus news group and to keep only one place
> FM> (the ding mainling list) where users can have a greater chance to get
> FM> their problems solved.
>
> I think the problem is volunteer labor for answering hard,
> time-consuming questions, not the newsgroup itself.

Well, I think addressing Gnus related questions in one place is more
convenient and efficient.

BTW, this is how it works for a couple of mailing lists I'm subscribed
to (git, lkml...).

Re: Alternatives to Gnus

[Francis Moreau]

On Sep 9, 3:16 am, Richard Riley <rile...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Francis Moreau <francis.m...@gmail.com> writes:
> > On Sep 7, 6:04 pm, Ted Zlatanov <t...@lifelogs.com> wrote:
> >> On Fri, 3 Sep 2010 12:50:26 -0700 (PDT) Francis Moreau <francis.m...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >> FM> OK, so I suggest to close gnus news group and to keep only one place
> >> FM> (the ding mainling list) where users can have a greater chance to get
> >> FM> their problems solved.
>
> >> I think the problem is volunteer labor for answering hard,
> >> time-consuming questions, not the newsgroup itself.
>
> > Well, I think addressing Gnus related questions in one place is more
> > convenient and efficient.
>
> > BTW, this is how it works for a couple of mailing lists I'm subscribed
> > to (git, lkml...).
>
> The gnus news group is sadly neglected. Its the more public face of gnus
> and it would be nice if the more experienced developers strayed there
> occasionally.

s/occasionally/regulary

That's mainly the point to have only one place for gnus.

Currently it's just appear for me (as a Gnus user) that Gnus:

   - is not or poorly supported
   - doesn't have any activities

Re: Alternatives to Gnus

[David Combs]

In article <049fd34b-8437-477a-bd95-ffbb8b80d787@m1g2000yqo.googlegroups.com>,
Francis Moreau  <francis.moro@gmail.com> wrote:
>Hello,
>
>After more than 2 years of gnus daily usage, I've finally decided to
>give up :(: too much pain, too much trouble, too much complex, too
>slow and too much wasted time. Gnus has definitively not been designed
>for me.
>
>So I'd like to find something else to use (and I'm sure it should
>exist because I'm pretty convinced that I'm not the only one in this
>case) to read my emails and news groups.
>
>I started to use Gnus because I run emacs in terminal mode and I want
>to do so when reading my emails/articles. I also want to use emacs to
>compose them.
>
>From my point of view, the most important features are: stability/
>robustness, speed and last but not the least usability. I think
>Thunderbird has them but unfortunately it doesn't have a terminal mode
>and can't use emacs in terminal mode to compose emails (yes it can
>with emacs in window mode but it's quite hackish).
>
>Could the emacs users give me some alternatives ?
>
>Thanks

Then trn4 is for you.  Try it; you will definitely like it.

You will especially like the "t" command, that draws a 2-dim
graph of the current thread, showing where you "are" in it,
thus making it easier to traverse back into the tree.

David

Re: Alternatives to Gnus

[Duke Normandin]

On Tue, 28 Sep 2010, David Combs wrote:

> In article <049fd34b-8437-477a-bd95-ffbb8b80d787@m1g2000yqo.googlegroups.com>,
> Francis Moreau  <francis.moro@gmail.com> wrote:
> >Hello,
> >
> >After more than 2 years of gnus daily usage, I've finally decided to
> >give up :(: too much pain, too much trouble, too much complex, too
> >slow and too much wasted time. Gnus has definitively not been designed
> >for me.
> >
> >So I'd like to find something else to use (and I'm sure it should
> >exist because I'm pretty convinced that I'm not the only one in this
> >case) to read my emails and news groups.
> >
> >I started to use Gnus because I run emacs in terminal mode and I want
> >to do so when reading my emails/articles. I also want to use emacs to
> >compose them.
> >
> >From my point of view, the most important features are: stability/
> >robustness, speed and last but not the least usability. I think
> >Thunderbird has them but unfortunately it doesn't have a terminal mode
> >and can't use emacs in terminal mode to compose emails (yes it can
> >with emacs in window mode but it's quite hackish).
> >
> >Could the emacs users give me some alternatives ?
> >
> >Thanks
>
> Then trn4 is for you.  Try it; you will definitely like it.
>
> You will especially like the "t" command, that draws a 2-dim
> graph of the current thread, showing where you "are" in it,
> thus making it easier to traverse back into the tree.

Or the OP could try `Alpine', the successor to Pine. Although you are
not working in emacs, I personally have `Alpine' use emacs as the
alternate editor. As well, `Alpine' natively does NGs very well,
IMO. No fuss; no muss; no bother! Worth a shot!
-- 
Duke

Re: Alternatives to Gnus

[Francis Moreau]

On Sep 28, 5:01 am, Duke Normandin <dukeofp...@ml1.net> wrote:
>
> Or the OP could try `Alpine', the successor to Pine. Although you are
> not working in emacs, I personally have `Alpine' use emacs as the
> alternate editor. As well, `Alpine' natively does NGs very well,
> IMO. No fuss; no muss; no bother! Worth a shot!

Are you using Alpine inside an emacs terminal (M-x term) ?

If so are you invoking an emacs client from Alpine ?

thanks

Re: Alternatives to Gnus

[Markus Gessner]

Hello Tim,

hope, it is not too late to enter the thread.

On Thu, 02 Sep 2010 08:31:41 +1000, Tim X. wrote:

> I'm not convinced that there are any huge advantages in having the
> same program to both read/send/manage email and read/send/manage
> news. I use gnus for newsgroups and think its really good at that. I
> tried it for mail, but to be honest, found it less so. I therefore use
> VM and Mew for reading mail.

I find these news quite exciting. Up to several years ago, I used VM for
my email for a long time, about 7 years. First with ordinary mail spool
files and then with an IMAP-server, but just downloading the mail to a
local directory.

At some point it seemed, that Gnus was better at handling encoding
problems, especially in the mail headers, so I started using it for
email. Gnus is a great application, but I too have the impression, that
its paradigms are better suited for news than for mail.

Nevertheless, after starting to work in a different place, I now depend
on real IMAP support, and somehow I got stuck with Thunderbird (having
to work under MS-Windows a lot).

If VM were on the way to support remote IMAP folders, it would be a
great thing. I always found VM a pleasure to use -- everything quite to
the point and very efficient.

Greetings
Markus

Re: Alternatives to Gnus

[notbob]

On 2010-09-01, Francis Moreau <francis.moro@gmail.com> wrote:

> From my point of view, the most important features are: stability/
> robustness, speed and last but not the least usability. 

Bingo!

> Could the emacs users give me some alternatives ?

Easily.  slrn!

While I'm a big emacs fan, I'm no codeboy.  Emacs requires more
expertise in slang than I'll ever have.  John E Davis (JED) has solved
all of this by creating slrn, the gnus-like newsreader, and jed, the
emacs-like text editor.  

Both work almost identically to emacs, but without all the mystical
slang code knowledge requirements needed for configuration.  He has
refined slrn to the point where it needs almost no tweaking, other
than simple variables in the config file, like your name, news server,
etc.  All the features are pre-configured.  All the features you wish
gnus has are already thought of (some you'd have never thought of!).
I learned on slrn, then went to gnus cuz I was told it was more
powerful.  I then went back to slrn cuz it already had all the
features, and more, I wanted but wuz too dumb to know how to config.
Why bother?  JED has already done it for you.

I use emacs as my editor, after originally using jed, cuz I like the
dired functions in emacs and a few other reasons.  slrn will let you
use whichever editor you like.  slrn is strictly a CLI app.  

It appears that John (JED) is a huge emacs fan, but wanted a
newsreader and editor that didn't require college courses in slang to
create.  slrn is his answer.  A brilliant solutions it is, too.

nb 

Re: Alternatives to Gnus

[Tim X]

Markus Gessner <nospam@nospam.com> writes:

> Hello Tim,
>
> hope, it is not too late to enter the thread.
>
> On Thu, 02 Sep 2010 08:31:41 +1000, Tim X. wrote:
>
>> I'm not convinced that there are any huge advantages in having the
>> same program to both read/send/manage email and read/send/manage
>> news. I use gnus for newsgroups and think its really good at that. I
>> tried it for mail, but to be honest, found it less so. I therefore use
>> VM and Mew for reading mail.
>
> I find these news quite exciting. Up to several years ago, I used VM for
> my email for a long time, about 7 years. First with ordinary mail spool
> files and then with an IMAP-server, but just downloading the mail to a
> local directory.
>
> At some point it seemed, that Gnus was better at handling encoding
> problems, especially in the mail headers, so I started using it for
> email. Gnus is a great application, but I too have the impression, that
> its paradigms are better suited for news than for mail.
>
> Nevertheless, after starting to work in a different place, I now depend
> on real IMAP support, and somehow I got stuck with Thunderbird (having
> to work under MS-Windows a lot).
>
> If VM were on the way to support remote IMAP folders, it would be a
> great thing. I always found VM a pleasure to use -- everything quite to
> the point and very efficient.
>

Uday Reddy has put a lot of work into improving VM's support for imap -
well worth checking out. He has also implemented compatibility with
thunderbird mail folders. 

Tim


-- 
tcross (at) rapttech dot com dot au

Re: Alternatives to Gnus

[Miles Bader]

Tim X <timx@nospam.dev.null> writes:
> I am a member of the VM developer team. VM is an excellent mail reader
> with a lot of power/flexibility, which has been around for a long time.
> After it's original developer moved on to other things, it did languish
> a bit. However, since last year, a number of people have been working on
> it to update it and integrate many of the add on features that have been
> contributed by various people. Development is very active and a number
> of enhancements have been added over the last few months,

Hmm, interesting.

VM used to be pretty xemacs-centric though (sometimes it would work in
gnu emacs, but the support was pretty grudging); is this still the case?

Thanks,

-miles

-- 
What the fuck do white people have to be blue about!?  Banana Republic ran
out of Khakis?  The Espresso Machine is jammed?  Hootie and The Blowfish
are breaking up??!  Shit, white people oughtta understand, their job is to
GIVE people the blues, not to get them!  -- George Carlin

Re: Alternatives to Gnus

[Tim X]

Miles Bader <miles@gnu.org> writes:

> Tim X <timx@nospam.dev.null> writes:
>> I am a member of the VM developer team. VM is an excellent mail reader
>> with a lot of power/flexibility, which has been around for a long time.
>> After it's original developer moved on to other things, it did languish
>> a bit. However, since last year, a number of people have been working on
>> it to update it and integrate many of the add on features that have been
>> contributed by various people. Development is very active and a number
>> of enhancements have been added over the last few months,
>
> Hmm, interesting.
>
> VM used to be pretty xemacs-centric though (sometimes it would work in
> gnu emacs, but the support was pretty grudging); is this still the case?
>
> Thanks,
>
I've been using VM since 1997 and have never been an xemacs user. I've
not found anything 'grudging' about it. Currently, most (if not all) the
active development is done under GNU Emacs (though we still try to
support XEmacs). 

Tim


-- 
tcross (at) rapttech dot com dot au