Re: [VM] Emacs for email: Rmail v VM v Gnus

[James Freer]

On Sun, Aug 12, 2012 at 8:41 AM, Uday Reddy <usr.vm.rocks@gmail.com> wrote:
> chad writes:
>
>> If you want to use emacs and keep your mail on the server, you
>> probably want to look into Wanderlust. Gnus can do it also [...]
>>
>> If you don't mind moving to keep your email locally, your options
>> expand quite a bit. In addition to Gnus, you can try rmail, mh-e, and
>> VM.
>
> I would like to correct the impression that VM is a local folder mail
> client.  Starting with version 8.1.0 (released in March 2010), VM has had
> full support for IMAP.  Quoting from the release notes for 8.1.0:
>
>   MAJOR NEW FEATURES:
>
>     * Support for reading and replying to messages in HTML.
>
>     * Full support for IMAP servers.  (See "IMPROVEMENTS for
>       imap-folders".)
>
> I should also add that VM is very similar to Rmail in its basic structure,
> but extends Rmail with full support for MIME and POP/IMAP servers.  It also
> has a very powerful virtual folder facility.  (VM was in fact the inventor
> of the "virtual folder" concept).  Virtual folders are extremely useful when
> you have to deal with large quantities of email, with multiple mail folders
> etc.
>
> You can find the public releases of VM here:
>
>   http://download.savannah.gnu.org/releases/viewmail/
>
> and the development versions here:
>
>   http://launchpad.net/vm
>
> Cheers,
> Uday

As VM isn't part of gnu-emacs why has Rmail not been developed. There
was a discussion thread a while back on how emacs could be improved.
Emacs is "complete working environment" but for email for IMAP and
virtual folders one has to turn to another app. Xemacs i believe has
VM installed with it. Why not use Xemacs? well i found it fairly poor
compared with gnu-emacs [well it doesn't seem to have been compiled
properly for use on ubuntu somehow.]

james