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

[Emanuel Berg <embe8573@student.uu.se>]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

>> Yes, that's called pulling rank
>
> You can call it what you want, the essence will not
> change: this was a valid data point

No.

>> and especially if it doesn't relate to the issue. "20
>> years" doesn't relate to Rmail or Gnus, and nothing
>> can be deducted from it, apart from, perhaps "Rmail
>> is at least 20 years old".
>
> You are missing the point.  I said I was using Rmail
> for the past 20 years, and yet didn't bump into the
> "single huge file" problem that you claimed was the
> problem with Rmail.

You misread me; I already told you that. My point was
always that I wanted *one file per mail*.

> But "one message per file" is not the only reasonable
> way of maintaining mail archives.  The alternatives
> are not limited to "one huge file", they include "a
> number of messages in each file".

Yes, you made that fine-grained point, but that is still
not what I want and that was what I meant. I don't see a
huge difference between one big file, and several small
files, if they still include several mails, not when it
comes to my purposes. (And I never said my way was the
way for anyone else.)

>> This is what I meant by the T-Rex metaphor.
>
> That metaphor simply doesn't fly, because Rmail does
> support multiple Rmail files in the same Emacs
> session.

I already said the metaphor might not have been crystal
clear. That's why I didn't instantly blow up on you for
taking those shots at me, and then pulling rank. I gave
you a shot at saying, "OK, I misread you, in that case,
you are not leaving Rmail because of 'broken usage'." -
but you didn't, you just went on.

Let me tell all of you reading this that I don't
discourage anyone from using Rmail. When I first
switched to it from the horrible web GUIs, that were
literally destroying my hands and eyes (and, for Rmail,
including the configuration I made, and the work I did
on the message mode, .mailrc, etc.) - this was an
*enormous* improvement, and I experienced it almost like
a love affair.

However, some time after that, I found Gnus and Usenet,
and I use Usenet everyday, and I can't see why the mail
and Usenet interface shouldn't be the same. Also, Gnus
is threaded; and, I had much more luck configuring Gnus
(there is a very ambitious homepage, and manual, and on
gnu.emacs.gnus you can get help from the man
himself). With Gnus, I can use the one-file solution
that is described above, with no fuss whatsoever. Last,
during my Usenet time, I learned a lot of useful tools
for example to filter traffic, and those can be employed
for mails as well - again, I don't see why the interface
shouldn't be the same for mail and Usenet.

To say that I, even in part, switched from Rmail to Gnus
because I didn't know how to use Rmail, does not deserve
any serious discussion. So step down, or I'll consider
you a flamer that is here to fight, and not to be
productive with Emacs.

-- 
Emanuel Berg - programmer (hire me! CV below)
computer projects: http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573
internet activity: http://home.student.uu.se/embe8573