From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.emacs.gnus.general/88762 Path: news.gmane.org!.POSTED.blaine.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Eric Abrahamsen Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.gnus.general Subject: Re: Proposed new introductory section to the Gnus manual Date: Tue, 10 Sep 2019 10:36:15 +0800 Message-ID: <87d0g8khcw.fsf@ericabrahamsen.net> References: <87o90mm4x2.fsf@ericabrahamsen.net> <87blwmuh6j.fsf@dick.i-did-not-set--mail-host-address--so-tickle-me> <87mug6klq3.fsf@ericabrahamsen.net> <87mug5bpuh.fsf@ucl.ac.uk> <87y2zojwbz.fsf@ericabrahamsen.net> <871rxggj9l.fsf@gmail.com> <87d0g9q44t.fsf@ericabrahamsen.net> <87a7bdelf4.fsf@gmail.com> <87tv9lmhzt.fsf@bobnewell.net> <875zm1w8sf.fsf@gmail.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Injection-Info: blaine.gmane.org; posting-host="blaine.gmane.org:195.159.176.226"; logging-data="267101"; mail-complaints-to="usenet@blaine.gmane.org" User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/27.0.50 (gnu/linux) To: ding@gnus.org Original-X-From: ding-owner+M36966@lists.math.uh.edu Tue Sep 10 04:37:10 2019 Return-path: Envelope-to: ding-account@gmane.org Original-Received: from lists1.math.uh.edu ([129.7.128.208]) by blaine.gmane.org with esmtps (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.89) (envelope-from ) id 1i7W1l-0017KS-U1 for ding-account@gmane.org; Tue, 10 Sep 2019 04:37:10 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=lists.math.uh.edu) by lists1.math.uh.edu with smtp (Exim 4.92) (envelope-from ) id 1i7W1A-0007Dh-VA; Mon, 09 Sep 2019 21:36:32 -0500 Original-Received: from mx2.math.uh.edu ([129.7.128.33]) by lists1.math.uh.edu with esmtps (TLSv1.3:TLS_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.92) (envelope-from ) id 1i7W17-0007B5-3k for ding@lists.math.uh.edu; Mon, 09 Sep 2019 21:36:29 -0500 Original-Received: from quimby.gnus.org ([80.91.231.51]) by mx2.math.uh.edu with esmtps (TLSv1.2:ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:256) (Exim 4.92.2) (envelope-from ) id 1i7W15-0002Ex-Id for ding@lists.math.uh.edu; Mon, 09 Sep 2019 21:36:28 -0500 Original-Received: from 195-159-176-226.customer.powertech.no ([195.159.176.226] helo=blaine.gmane.org) by quimby.gnus.org with esmtps (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.89) (envelope-from ) id 1i7W11-0001Dn-Qs for ding@gnus.org; Tue, 10 Sep 2019 04:36:25 +0200 Original-Received: from list by blaine.gmane.org with local (Exim 4.89) (envelope-from ) id 1i7W11-0016T8-8v for ding@gnus.org; Tue, 10 Sep 2019 04:36:23 +0200 X-Injected-Via-Gmane: http://gmane.org/ Cancel-Lock: sha1:eR1DC7BgWVAzjZX5RnoqDq3hn00= List-ID: Precedence: bulk Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.gnus.general:88762 Archived-At: dick writes: > BN> I suppose YMMV but I found it very useful > > The hard part is not the quirky UX which he calls the "essential 5%". The > hard part is configuring Gnus to something usable, and that is completely > glossed over. > > I'm typical of most newcomers who merely want their cloud service, i.e., > Gmail, integrated into emacs. I couldn't find anything authoritative for this > pedestrian task. I found nnimap without dovecot unusable. And I am wary of > nnmaildir because I hesitate to do my own search indexing. > > BN> gnus is niche software. > > It shouldn't be for two reasons: > > 1) As the built-in client, it needs to work out of the box. Alas, it's not > meeting the duties of the throne. Its recalcitrance towards new users is like > Yahoo occupying Firefox's default search engine when Google is clearly superior. > > 2) It's awesome. While integration with emacs alone is worth the price of > admission, Gnus bests other mua's because its message queue paradigm subsumes > all my news, mail, and reddit activity in a single dashboard. As it stands, > you *must* know elisp to be a day-to-day Gnus user, and I'm looking to change > that. In theory, at least, the Customize interface is there to help users who don't feel comfortable writing elisp. Gnus has a lot of variables with pretty convoluted value-structures. I wonder if its Customize support is currently up to snuff in terms of helping users configure everything without writing setq's? Maybe that would be a good area to work on?