From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Johan Vromans Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: Re: Handling mail Date: Fri, 15 Jul 2011 20:58:30 +0200 Message-ID: References: <19998.64601.266213.844826@phoenix.squirrel.nl> <87tyanfp4o.fsf@gmx.co.uk> NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: dough.gmane.org 1310756456 20396 80.91.229.12 (15 Jul 2011 19:00:56 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@dough.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 15 Jul 2011 19:00:56 +0000 (UTC) Cc: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org To: Johnny Original-X-From: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Fri Jul 15 21:00:51 2011 Return-path: Envelope-to: geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([140.186.70.17]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1Qhnd4-0003sc-8H for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Fri, 15 Jul 2011 21:00:50 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:45805 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1Qhnd2-0006pw-FE for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Fri, 15 Jul 2011 15:00:48 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([140.186.70.92]:41299) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1Qhnav-0006p4-AI for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Fri, 15 Jul 2011 14:58:38 -0400 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1Qhnat-000507-PC for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Fri, 15 Jul 2011 14:58:36 -0400 Original-Received: from smtp-vbr5.xs4all.nl ([194.109.24.25]:4291) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1Qhnat-0004zm-7d for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Fri, 15 Jul 2011 14:58:35 -0400 Original-Received: from phoenix.squirrel.nl (sioban.squirrel.nl [80.101.24.220]) by smtp-vbr5.xs4all.nl (8.13.8/8.13.8) with ESMTP id p6FIwUfE040535; Fri, 15 Jul 2011 20:58:30 +0200 (CEST) (envelope-from jv@squirrel.nl) Original-Received: by phoenix.squirrel.nl (Postfix, from userid 501) id 3E1B5C00D6; Fri, 15 Jul 2011 20:58:30 +0200 (CEST) In-Reply-To: <87tyanfp4o.fsf@gmx.co.uk> (Johnny's message of "Fri, 15 Jul 2011 18:08:23 +0100") User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/23.2 (gnu/linux) X-Virus-Scanned: by XS4ALL Virus Scanner X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: FreeBSD 4.6-4.9 X-Received-From: 194.109.24.25 X-BeenThere: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.help:81604 Archived-At: Thanks for your replies. > What do you think is the option and what is lacking in emacs mail > clients? I think my major problem is history. In 25 years many things have evolved (changed) in the world of Mail and News, and my setups contain many quirks to work around limitations that may not exists anymore. I was an early adopter of MIME, non-ASCII display, GUI Emacs (Epoch) and Unicode (Mule). The setups may have reached the point of becoming inconsistent. The problems that I actually experience during daily use is: - No proper display if Unicode characters (Emacs and Gnus do this right, VM doesn't). - Mysterious handling of message attachments (some are displayed inline, some are displatched to external 'viewers', but most are offered to be saved to disk). This may be a problem external to Emacs. > Gnus and BBDB have active development. Gnus, yes. But BBDB? "BBDB 2.35 is the current stable released version, released on January 30, 2007." Seems rather old to me... >> Gnus seems to be the only package that is up-to-date (I use it for >> reading news and mailing lists), however I've never been able to live >> with it as a news reader. [this should have read "with it as a mail reader"] I treat mail and news as two different sources of information. For news (and, in my case, mailing lists) I read what's new and interesting, then all's gone (gnus-summary-catchup-and exit) unless I explicitly mark articles to keep. For mail, every message stays in my mailbox until I explicitly file or delete it. When I tried Gnus to read mail (years ago) I couldn't get it to just leave the messages. After reading a message it must be kept explictly otherwise it's gone. Moreover, VM provides some nifty features that I haven't yet found out how to do with Gnus: - Automatically infer the name of the file to save a message into, depending on the sender name (and using the mail-folder property in the BBDB, if any). - In the summary, display the name of the recipient if the sender is me ('me' being a list of mail addresses). This is particularly handy since I save BCC's of outgoing messages in my primary mailbox. - Automatically (or on demand) change my from, reply-to, selected headers and signature depending on which of my email addresses the message was sent to. > I'd suggest you give it a go. Basically, if you want control over your > computer usage and information flow and are willing to configure usage > to your needs, there's no real option (or?). I guess I have to bite the bullit and throw away my VM and Gnus config and start from scratch, using the features that are available now. Not an easy task, though... -- Johan