Re: Using R-mail in Emacs

[Bob Newell]

Bob Proulx <bob@proulx.com> writes:

> And I have had similar experiences with gnus for, well, newsgroups.  I
> am currently using gnus to read news but I don't really like it.  It
> is very arcane by comparison to other newsreaders that I have used.
> And here I am quite a hard core long time emacs user but I don't find
> gnus to be a very good interface.  I am just trying to use it because
> it is a long term emacs interface.  But I find doing even simple
> things quite difficult to impossible.  I would never recommend gnus
> for email.

I can understand the pain. When I attempted the switch from viewmail
(vm) to gnus, it was ... what am I doing to myself? But ...

Gnus takes a lot of patience, really a lot. It starts to pay off,
though. When I integrated BBDB that was a huge leap forward, and many
things became possible that were difficult with other clients. I would
say, though, that it took me months to get to that stage, and years to
get to where I am now, where gnus is part of my regular workflow and is
virtually indispensible.

I think a lot of people just don't want to go to that much trouble (or
are not fanatical enough[1], take your pick), and I completely get that,
when something like Gmail's web client is really easy to use and is
quickly learned.

You mentioned mutt--- that certainly works quite well (I use it once in
a while when in a rush and not wanting to start up Emacs) although it
just doesn't have the flexibility and sheer power of Gnus (but you never
said it did).

Gnus plays to a niche audience of devotees. As someone further up in
this now long thread pointed out, there isn't much it can't do (though
"do it easily" was definitely not claimed).

Aloha from Hawai`i nei,

-- 
Bob Newell
Honolulu, Hawai`i
* Via Gnus/BBDB/Org/Emacs/Linux *

[1] I read email on my Android phone with Gnus. That is /definitely/ fanatical.