Re: Anyone gone from mutt to Emacs? was: Re: Moving from Thunderbird to Emacs for mail and calendar

[Tim X <timx@nospam.dev.null>]

Matt Lundin <mdl@imapmail.org> writes:

> Joost Kremers <joostkremers@yahoo.com> writes:
>
>> David Combs wrote:
>>> Question: I use mutt on my isp-shell-account, and like it,
>>> and use .1% of its capability (I think, so powerful is it).
>>> Has anyone switched from mutt to emacs (temporarily or not)?
>>> Comments?
>>
>> I did, a couple of years ago, switching to mutt+slrn to Gnus. I ended
>> up switching back after a month or so.
>>
>> Gnus for news is fine, slrn works in much the same way, but I couldn't
>> get used to Gnus' handling of email. Gnus treats every mail folder in
>> the same way that it does a news group, and I simply couldn't get used
>> to that.
>
> If I'm reading the manual correctly, you can change this behavior for
> mail groups using group parameters:
>
> http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/gnus/Group-Parameters.html
>
> (See the "display" option.)
>
>>
>> I've considered using one of the email clients for Emacs, but none
>>seems to have been designed with the possibility of having more than
>>one (IMAP)-server in mind.
>
> I believe Wanderlust can handle multiple IMAP servers. See the syntax
> for adding new IMAP groups/folders:
>
> http://www.gohome.org/wl/doc/wl_19.html#SEC19
>

The mew emacs mail client will also handle multiple imap, pop and mbox
folders. VM can also do it and as mentioned, so can gnus.

My experience has been

1. VM easiest to setup. Whent for a while without any development, but
things have improved over the last couple of years. 

2. Mew. A little harder to setup as some of the concepts were not as
intuitive/familiar as I was use to. However, once setup, it works well. 

3. Gnus. Quite complex to setup and takes some time to get configured
exactly as you want. However, probably the most powerful client I've
ever used. Steep learning curve, but probably worth the effort if you
have more complex requirements. 

I don't use Gnus at present because I simply didn't have the need for it
anymore. I now use a much simpler setup that retrieves the mail using
fetchmail (I know some are critical of fetchmail, but it has worked
perfectly for me for a long time. Using it avoids temporary emacs
freezes that can occur with some of the mail clients when they retrieve
mail). I use procmail to sort the mail and now, I can use any of the
clients to read my mail. 

The downside of this approach is for when you have a remote imap server
where you want to manage all your mail on the remote server i.e. create
new remote folders, move mail between remote folders etc. I've found mew
pretty good at that, but no longer have that requirement myself.

Tim

-- 
tcross (at) rapttech dot com dot au