Re: From Gnus to mu4e

[Rainer M Krug]

Julien Cubizolles <j.cubizolles@free.fr> writes:

> Bastien <bzg@gnu.org> writes:
>
>> Julien Cubizolles <j.cubizolles@free.fr> writes:
>>
>>> I'm considering moving from Gnus to mu4e, mostly because I spend too
>>> much time tinkering with settings I don't really understand/need in
>>> Gnus, and because the search feature seems promising.
>>
>> After a *lot* of scratching and testing, here is my setup:
>>
>> - Gnus for news and mails: because there are too many things I miss in
>>   other MUA.  A simple example: quote only the selected region when
>>   replying.  This cannot be implemented easily in mu and notmuch.
>>
>> - notmuch as a search engine: mu is really great (I used it the last
>>   three months) but I cannot get used to mu4e.  And starting mu4e with
>>   a database of 100K emails takes two or three seconds.
>>
>> - mbsync to sync imap folders as local maildirs: I used offlineimap
>>   for several years and mbsync is just faster.

Sorry - I am late to this question.

I am using the same setup, only with offlineimap - it works, and speed
is not such a problem for me so that I would move to mbsync.

>
> That seems very interesting, and I think I'll try to set it
> up. offlineimap or mbsync seems to be the right way to:
>   + have a fast access to my mail (nnimap from Gnus on a remote server
>   is a bit slow sometimes)
>
>   + have a complete access from my mobile phone
>
>   + I can still choose whatever MUA I want on top of that if I want to
>   try something else thant Gnus and still access my old nnml mail.

Exactly - and you can easily make backups from your all your emails in a
format which will be supported for quite some time.

>
> I have a few questions about some details of your setup:
>
>   + regarding filtering and spam detection, do you rely on the
>   possibilities offered by you mail provider (Gmail or other)?

I am using gmail for this - thought for some minutes about implementing
it locally, but gmail works reliable.

>
>   + you said you're running Dovecot. Gnus could also directly access the
>   local maildir without a local imap server the way mu4e does, couldn't
>   it ? What's the benefit of running it ?

There is one program accessing the mail folder: dovecot - no conflicts, race
conditions, no slightly different formats, standards, ... And you can
also remotely access dovecot if you want to.

By the way: the dovecot daemon is not permanently running, as I am using
the shell access from gnus:

,----
| (nnimap-shell-program "/usr/local/opt/dovecot/libexec/dovecot/imap -o 
mail_location=maildir:$HOME/Maildir")))
`----

The same from offlineimap:

,----
| preauthtunnel = /usr/local/opt/dovecot/libexec/dovecot/imap -o 
mail_location=maildir:$HOME/Maildir
`----

and offlineimap only reads the emails from the maildir.

And I have found the following two functions to open the same message
which is open in gnus in notmuch and the other way around:

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
** In notmuch jump to gnus folder
From 
[[http://roland.entierement.nu/blog/2010/09/08/gnus-dovecot-offlineimap-search-a-howto.html]]:
  But seeing just the message that matches is not enough, 
  sometimes we want the whole thread. Here's a snippet of 
  Lisp for your .gnus, based on Tassilo Horn's configuration. 
  Do a Notmuch search, enter one of the results, type C-c C-c, 
  you'll get transported to the folder where that message was, 
  with the context. Note this requires code from org-mode, 
  so you might need to install that.

#+begin_src emacs-lisp

(defun rmk/notmuch-file-to-group (file)
  "Calculate the Gnus group name from the given file name.
  "
  (let ((group (file-name-directory (directory-file-name (file-name-directory 
file)))))
    (setq group (replace-regexp-in-string ".*/Maildir/" "nnimap+Maildir:" 
group))
    (setq group (replace-regexp-in-string "/$" "" group))
    (if (string-match ":$" group)
        (concat group "INBOX")
      (replace-regexp-in-string ":\\." ":" group))))

(defun rmk/notmuch-goto-message-in-gnus ()
  "Open a summary buffer containing the current notmuch
  article."
  (interactive)
  (let ((group (rmk/notmuch-file-to-group (notmuch-show-get-filename)))
        (message-id (replace-regexp-in-string
                     "^id:" "" (notmuch-show-get-message-id))))
    (setq message-id (replace-regexp-in-string "\"" "" message-id))
    (if (and group message-id)
        (progn 
          (switch-to-buffer "*Group*")
          (org-gnus-follow-link group message-id))
      (message "Couldn't get relevant infos for switching to Gnus."))))

(define-key notmuch-show-mode-map (kbd "C-c C-c") 
'rmk/notmuch-goto-message-in-gnus)
#+end_src
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

Hope this helps,

Rainer

>
>> - postfix with smtp_sender_dependent_authentication to use various
>>   smtp servers depending on the email I'm using.  I see people use
>>   msmtp and msmtp-mta, which I tried for a while, but I'm just too
>>   impatient with the .3s you have to wait when sending.  
>
>   From looking at my fossilized .gnus.el, I'm using smtpmail, which
>   would be equivalent to msmtp.
>
>   + I'm gonna need to duplicate this setup on two machines (laptop and
>   desktop). I guess running offline imap on the two machines and
>   synchronizing the nnml, nnarchive mail by unison would work.
>
> Thanks a lot for all this information. I've a much clearer idea of all
> the possibilities now.
>
> Julien.
>
>
>

-- 
Rainer M. Krug
email: Rainer<at>krugs<dot>de
PGP: 0x0F52F982

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