Re: Moving from Thunderbird to Emacs for mail and calendar

[Jeff Clough]

I'm pretty sure you've decided this is a religious issue at this
point, so it's unlikely I'm going to pursue the conversation beyond
this message.  You like Gnus, I don't.  Fair enough.

From: Richard Riley <rileyrgdev@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 13 Oct 2009 18:20:59 +0200

> Why not? If you mention specifics that did not work maybe I or others
> might help?

Help with what?  Getting software I'm no longer interested in to run?

> I got most of my config from a mixture of howtos and the manual.

I read that as at least three independent sources of documentation.  I
don't find that at all reasonable, but hey, I'm not the world.

>> It's not wrong to compare what I know about Gnus to what I know about
>> Mew.
> 
> That is true Jeff. But you didn't do that. You said you never got Gnus
> working. Which is a different thing. I think its hard to be objective
> about a MUA if you didn't actually use it as one. Or am I mistaken in
> your meaning?

My answer to this was (and is) below.

>>
>> Where the Gnus documentation exists, it's awful.  This is in direct
>> contrast of Mew, where I was able to look at one page of text, follow
>> a handful of steps and have a working MUA in less than an hour.
>>
>> Gnus also brags about the fact that all messages are treated the same,
> 
> Brags?

Yes.  From page one of the manual:

"Gnus is a message-reading laboratory. It will let you look at just
about anything as if it were a newsgroup. You can read mail with it,
you can browse directories with it, you can ftp with it|you can even
read news with it!"

> And also not true. Using splitting on the gnus client side or
> subscribing to different maildirs via imap for example different
> messages can go to different folders all with their own customised
> handling/presentation/posting style.

That you can customize it's behavior and make things do what you want
them to do is not an endorsement of the default behavior.  The
developers of Gnus, as expressed in their own documentation, say that
a strength of Gnus is treating all of the messages the same.

> It's certainly not "crap". But if you don't have the patience or the
> desire to pursue it and you're happy with Mew, then enjoy - it's still
> a great email client I am sure hosted by emacs.

How many hours of frustration should a user be expected to endure in
order to run a piece of software to solve the problem of reading
email?  Mind you, I'm not talking about hours spent learning how to
*use* the software, I'm talking about hours spent just getting it to
work *at all*.

> In short my email set up talks to an impa server, drags all emails in,
> splits them into different folders, I then use different smtp servers
> for sending depending on the posting style employed by that particular
> group. It all works very, very fast, efficiently and reliably with
> excellent customisation facilities. No. It's not "crap".

So Gnus isn't crap as a *client* because you can do everything you
want by running multiple *servers*!?!  I'm sorry, but in my world
"become a sysadmin for a handful of servers" is in no way a reasonable
solution to "i'd like to read my email now".

Jeff



----------
Author of the Genesys System
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