Newbie ignorance about just reading email

[Felix Finch <felix@crowfix.com>]

I run Linux (Slackware 9.x) and GNU emacs (21.3) and have used vm for
a long time to read email, but it only works with maildirs thru the
kluge of copying maildir messages into an mbox file.  This is not very
satisfying.  I know KDE's Kmail understands maildirs, but I want a
text mail reader that works over ssh.  I have used pine and whatnot,
and they don't excite me either.  A google search said gnus might do
the trick, so I downloaded it and have pawed thru the info file, but
almost all the documentation is related to reading news, and I don't
want gnus for that, at least not now; maybe later.  If I can't get it
to handle email, and just email, it doesn't do me any good to switch
news readers just for fun.

What I want is for M-x gnus to bring up mail, and nothing else.  I
created an initial gnus.el file like this ...

    (setq gnus-select-methods '((nnmaildir "")))
    (setq mail-sources '((maildir :path "~/.nnmaildir/")))

with some dummy Maildirs in there for testing, and all it wants to do
is create a News directory and run some startup news code, which
complains that some bogus new server is unavilable, then asks if I
want to go offline.  I haven't explored it any further.

I realize I haven't fully explored the copious info files, but so much
of it assumes I want to read news, or is related to how to handle
messages, that my b\poor addled brain begins to fade and I don't want
to spend hours sorting hay to find the needle I do need.

Is there some basic simple way to configure gnus to only process mail
on startup?

-- 
            ... _._. ._ ._. . _._. ._. ___ .__ ._. . .__. ._ .. ._.
     Felix Finch: scarecrow repairman & rocket surgeon / felix@crowfix.com
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