Re: Mutt/Gnus hybrid for mail?

[Eric S Fraga <e.fraga@ucl.ac.uk>]

On Monday,  8 Dec 2014 at 17:47, Peter Davis wrote:

[...]

> Most significantly, since I only use mutt or gnus for email, I find mutt
> more intuitive, since its commands, etc. were designed for email. "Delete"
> instead of "Expire", etc. (BTW, I'm using both with Fastmail.fm IMAP.)

As others have said, you can bind keys to whatever you want.  For
instance,

#+begin_src emacs-lisp
  (defun esf/alter-summary-map ()
    (local-set-key "d" 'gnus-summary-delete-article)
    (local-set-key "e" 'gnus-summary-mark-as-expirable)
    (local-set-key "u" 'gnus-summary-put-mark-as-unread)
    (local-set-key "w" 'gnus-article-fill-long-lines)
    )
  (add-hook 'gnus-summary-mode-hook 'esf/alter-summary-map)
#+end_src

> Also, when I delete/expire a message, mutt automatically displays the
> next unread message in the folder. Gnus requires another keystroke. (Not
> a big deal, but annoying.)

Gnus displays the next article for me if I am displaying an
article and hit "n", " " or "e".  Otherwise not.  If I am not displaying
an article, "n" and " " display the next article.

> I have not managed to get gnus to display previously read messages in a
> thread automatically, though I've messed around with 
> (setq gnus-fetch-old-headers t). I gather this is inconsistent on IMAP
> servers, and slow.

I use the agent and, in combination with settings gnus-fetch-old-headers
to t, I get the ancestors of any email shown in the summary window.  I
don't know if the agent is key here but it probably helps with speed.

> I realize I could customize gnus to behave exactly the way I want, but
> I'm not a much of a lisper, so it would take me a fair bit of
> effort. Anyway, customatizations are unlikely to improve
> performance. Mutt seems faster at downloading messages, etc.

Mutt *is* faster but *I* am faster with gnus than with mutt in terms of
productivity.  YMMV, of course :)  I used mutt for years before
switching to gnus maybe 8 years ago now and haven't looked back.

HTH,
eric

-- 
: Eric S Fraga, GnuPG: 0xFFFCF67D
: in Emacs 24.4.1 + Ma Gnus v0.12 + evil-git-d432ec2
: BBDB version 3.1.2 (2014-04-27 15:05:20 -0500)