Re: Gnus vs Wanderlust

[Miles Bader <miles@gnu.org>]

colin.rafferty@morganstanley.com writes:
> I love Gnus as a news reader.  I use it actively, and think it is the
> best news reader ever.  However, the needs of a mail reader are
> different from a news reader.

I've always thought this was a very silly argument.  I also find that I
have slightly different preferences for mail and news, but the amount of
_shared_ behavior is _huge_.  It seems bizarre to say "Oh just implement
a completely new system!" instead of just fixing the problems with Gnus.
Not only is the amount of duplicated work enormous, but it's a burden
for the _user_ to have to learn and configure two separate systems,
especially once they start to explore more advanced features.

It's possible that the Gnus framework is so ill-suited to, say, caching
that this would be even more work, but it seems unlikely.

The main complaints I've seen about Gnus behavior with email are
(1) summary generation speed, and (2) lack of rmail-style `categories'.

I don't know much about (2), but with regards to (1), at least with
backends such as nnml -- which does cache summary information, if not
pre-formatted summaries -- the main problem I've had seems to be the
same that you mention:  it deals poorly with sparse article ranges.
Fixing this would go a _long_ way towards making it perfect for me.

-Miles
-- 
Freedom's just another word, for nothing left to lose   --Janis Joplin