Re: What's your gnus-demon-scan-news idle time?

[Bob Newell <bobnewell@bobnewell.net>]

Aloha,

I run a single instance of emacs, and I refresh gnus only with 'g' on
a purely manual basis. But that isn't the full story.

I use IMAP exclusively as I run gnus and emacs across something like 8
devices. Since checking/fetching IMAP is slow and blocking, I only
want to do that when (a) I know there is something to fetch and (b) I
want to fetch it.

When emacs starts, I have it launch a bash script that loops and
periodically checks for new mail in my IMAP boxes (primarily gmail).
If there is new mail (not just unread mail, but something newly
arrived since last check) it writes a small drop file and barks (plays
a sound).

A small function driven off the mode-line checks the drop file. This
is very fast with no perceptible overhead. The modeline shows the
number of new emails. (A few other functions deal with updating the
mode line when I actually read the new mail.)

So when I either hear the bark or notice new mail in the modeline, and
I feel okay with stopping my work for a bit, I make a manual check. At
this point I don't mind the blocking operation.

Now, at least for me, NOT checking email often is a good thing. I used
to check it a lot. Maybe it's a positive feature that IMAP email
reading with gnus is both blocking and slow, because my
constant/frequent checking/reading email was an enormous time waster
and productivity drain.

Bob Newell
Honolulu, Hawai`i