Re: Mutt/Gnus hybrid for mail?

[jorge.alfaro-murillo@yale.edu (Jorge A. Alfaro-Murillo)]

Peter Davis writes:

> 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.)

If you use IMAP perhaps you should move the messages to the Trash 
group instead of expiring them.

I think that expiring fits more to handling your email like news, 
meaning, you only read what it is not read, and leave everything 
in the server. You don't worry about deleting things and just for 
space issues you expire things that are very old. Of course there 
are things that require your attention later, and that you want to 
keep showing as news.  For those you use ticks (key "!").

> 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.)

You could assign a key to a function like this:

#+BEGIN_SRC emacs-lisp
  (defun my-gnus-summary-delete-article ()
    (interactive)
    (gnus-summary-move-article nil "nnimap+Fastmail.fm:Trash")
    (gnus-summary-next-unread-article))
 
#+END_SRC

"nnimap+Fastmai.fml:Trash" is just a guess, you should use 
whatever your group is called.

> 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.

Maybe try setting

#+BEGIN_SRC emacs-lisp
  (setq gnus-refer-thread-use-nnir t)
 
#+END_SRC

And then use "A T" when you need it. With 99% of the people using 
a TOFU (Text Over, Fullquote Under) style, most of the time you do 
not need to see the whole thread since it appears in the latest 
email.
 
> Anyway, customatizations are unlikely to improve performance. 
> Mutt seems faster at downloading messages, etc.

I would also like to hear about ways to improve performance.

Best,

-- 
Jorge.