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