Re: gnus & nnmaildir

[Emanuel Berg]

lee <lee@yun.yagibdah.de> writes:

> Having these groups is one of the big advantages over
> mutt. A big disadvantage is that nnml is understood
> by gnus exclusively. In case you want/need to be able
> to use different MUAs, maildir or imap work much
> better for that.

Gnus is good, and it is complicated, so if you invest
time in understanding it to be helped by its power, I
don't think there is reason to switch. Even so the nnml
storage system is, well, as system. You could write a
script to crunch those files to setup a new system, of
coure.

> There's also posting styles

Yes, another useful feature though in my experience not
as indispensible as splitting.

> With mutt, I used an exim filter file. Gnus is rather
> slow with splitting and sometimes with building a
> summary buffer --- compared to mutt, which is really
> fast.

If you have a KILL file it can take a short time for
several hundreds or more messages. I'm OK with that as
I check the newsgroups and mail groups every day, so
there are seldom that many messages. But even when
there are it is fast, and besides it is a one-time
delay. Not as in the unresponsiveness of every
interactive command or the jitter of a bitstream -
those are much more frustrating.

> And you can read pretty much everything you want as
> mail ... With mutt, I was using emacs as editor
> anyway. Over the years, I kept looking from time to
> time if there's anything better. There never was
> until I tried gnus.

Did you save the message buffers as files and fed them
to mutt from the shell or did you automatize this
somehow from Emacs?

> Which font do you use? It looks good on the
> screenshots.

You bet. If you saw a font of the Linux console, it is
Terminus. In /etc/default/console-setup:

VERBOSE_OUTPUT="no"
ACTIVE_CONSOLES="/dev/tty[1-6]"
CHARMAP="UTF-8"
CODESET="Lat7"
FONTFACE="Terminus"
FONTSIZE="28x14"
SCREEN_WIDTH=72
SCREEN_HEIGHT=27

If you saw a font of X, in ~/.Xresources, I think it is

xterm*faceName: xft:bitstram vera sans mono:size=15:antialias=true

the reason I am unsure is that that dumps shows urxvt,
not xterm, but I take it the same fonts works for both,
and that I didn't change since switching from urxvt to
xterm.

> Or ding.gnus.org? gnu.emacs.gnus doesn't look like a
> mailing list but like an uncategorized forum, and
> there's no way to subscribe?

No, it is a newsgroup, just like gnu.emacs.help,
gnu.emacs.sources, alt.os.linux, etc. Maybe there is a
hybrid solution for that just as there is for
gnu.emacs.help (a listbot gate) but I don't know, it
makes less sense as most Gnus users should prefer
Usenet.

> Emails are the most important and most convenient way
> of communication to me.

No doubt.

> Outlook is unsuited to deal with more than perhaps a
> handful of emails per day, if that. Besides, there
> isn't any really good MUA for windoze.

I didn't use Outlook for ages but I don't think I'd
take to Thunderbird that much more. I want an all-text,
no GUI, mouse-free, in-Emacs client.

>> Tools, tools, tools... If you are in a beautiful,
>> cool garden with the best shovel in the world,
>> working on your digging skills, digging for ten
>> hours straight is paradise.
>
> Only if you love to dig.

No, that's the idea. If you love everything around an
activity - the setting, the tools - you start to love
the activity as well. At least I do.

>> I don't know if I should bow because I am so
>> grateful to Linux, Emacs, Gnus, and Usenet, *or* if
>> I should pound myself on the chest for finding them,
>> and nothing short of making them a part of me! Just
>> unbelievable stuff.
>
> You can always make contributions. The problem is
> that usually no one really cares.

I think people care, it is just that don't share my
taste, most often. Those who do, are usually themselves
capable (haha). So it seems there isn't that huge a
market for my skills. Or "skillz". Or M-A-N-N-Y :)

-- 
underground experts united