Gnus vs Wanderlust

Gnus vs Wanderlust

[Miguel]

Hi,

I been using Gnus for email only since a while. I think it is a very nice client
but I would like to compare it with other Gnu/Emacs email clients. After a quick
search, I found no comments comparing Gnus and Wanderlust. Could anyone that has
already tried both say something about this topic?

Thanks.

--
Miguel

Re: Gnus vs Wanderlust

[Katsumi Yamaoka]

>>>>> In <loom.20040531T121715-288@post.gmane.org>
>>>>>	Miguel <umiguel@alunos.deis.isec.pt> wrote:

> Hi,

> I been using Gnus for email only since a while. I think it is
> a very nice client but I would like to compare it with other
> Gnu/Emacs email clients. After a quick search, I found no
> comments comparing Gnus and Wanderlust. Could anyone that has
> already tried both say something about this topic?

> Thanks.

Well, I cannot say in a word but Wanderlust is also a good mail
and newsreader.  It supports many kinds of back ends, GUI, spam
filtering, etc.  The well-arranged manual is provided and to
customize it is easy.  Wanderlust is mainly developed by Japanese
people, and you can meet them and a lot of users in the following
open lists:

wl@lists.airs.net (mainly for discussing in Japanese)
wl-en@lists.airs.net (for English but gatewayed to wl)

To subscribe to them, send a mail including "# guide" in the
body to wl-ctl@lists.airs.net or wl-en-ctl@lists.airs.net.
-- 
Katsumi Yamaoka <yamaoka@jpl.org>

Re: Gnus vs Wanderlust

[Lloyd Zusman]

Katsumi Yamaoka <yamaoka@jpl.org> writes:

>>>>>> In <loom.20040531T121715-288@post.gmane.org>
>>>>>>	Miguel <umiguel@alunos.deis.isec.pt> wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>
>> I been using Gnus for email only since a while. I think it is
>> a very nice client but I would like to compare it with other
>> Gnu/Emacs email clients. After a quick search, I found no
>> comments comparing Gnus and Wanderlust. Could anyone that has
>> already tried both say something about this topic?
>
>> Thanks.
>
> Well, I cannot say in a word but Wanderlust is also a good mail
> and newsreader.  It supports many kinds of back ends, GUI, spam
> filtering, etc.  The well-arranged manual is provided and to
> customize it is easy.   [ ... ]

I'm interested in trying Wanderlust, and I just now attempted to get a
recent version of it on the main site and the mirrors that are listed
there.  But the latest version I have found is this one which is just
under 11 months old: wl-2.10.1.tar.gz

Are there any newer versions of this software?

Thanks in advance.

-- 
 Lloyd Zusman
 ljz@asfast.com
 God bless you.

Re: Gnus vs Wanderlust

[Katsumi Yamaoka]

Hi,

>>>>> In <m3d64jtpq6.fsf@asfast.com> 
>>>>>	Lloyd Zusman <ljz@asfast.com> wrote:

> Are there any newer versions of this software?

The latest version can be downloaded by anonymous cvs as follows:

% cvs -d :pserver:anonymous@cvs.m17n.org:/cvs/root login
CVS password: [CR] # NULL string
% cvs -d :pserver:anonymous@cvs.m17n.org:/cvs/root checkout wanderlust

Or you can also get the snapshot which I'm making mostly every day:

ftp://ftp.jpl.org/wl/snapshots/wanderlust-2004********.tar.gz
or
http://www.jpl.org/ftp/wl/snapshots/wanderlust-2004********.tar.gz
-- 
Katsumi Yamaoka <yamaoka@jpl.org>

Re: Gnus vs Wanderlust

[Lloyd Zusman]

Katsumi Yamaoka <yamaoka@jpl.org> writes:

> Hi,
>
>>>>>> In <m3d64jtpq6.fsf@asfast.com> 
>>>>>>	Lloyd Zusman <ljz@asfast.com> wrote:
>
>> Are there any newer versions of this software?
>
> The latest version can be downloaded by anonymous cvs as follows:
>
> % cvs -d :pserver:anonymous@cvs.m17n.org:/cvs/root login
> CVS password: [CR] # NULL string
> % cvs -d :pserver:anonymous@cvs.m17n.org:/cvs/root checkout wanderlust
>
> Or you can also get the snapshot which I'm making mostly every day:
>
> ftp://ftp.jpl.org/wl/snapshots/wanderlust-2004********.tar.gz
> or
> http://www.jpl.org/ftp/wl/snapshots/wanderlust-2004********.tar.gz
> -- 
> Katsumi Yamaoka <yamaoka@jpl.org>

Thank you very much.  I have now downloaded a very recent version of
Wanderlust, and I am about to try it.


-- 
 Lloyd Zusman
 ljz@asfast.com
 God bless you.

Re: Gnus vs Wanderlust

[David Abrahams]

Lloyd Zusman <ljz@asfast.com> writes:

> Thank you very much.  I have now downloaded a very recent version of
> Wanderlust, and I am about to try it.

Lloyd, 

I hope you will write a report of your experience (and cc: me when
you do ;->).  

Thanks,
Dave

Re: Gnus vs Wanderlust

[colin.rafferty]

Miguel wrote:

> I been using Gnus for email only since a while. I think it is a very
> nice client but I would like to compare it with other Gnu/Emacs
> email clients. 

I used VM as a mail reader for about 7 years.  I then used Gnus for
about two years.  I switched back to VM for three more years.  I have
been using WL for about two months now.

I stopped using Gnus for mail because, to paraphrase Kyle Jones, I
prefer a mail reader for mail, and a news reader for news.  Note that
this is a personal decision.

When I enter a mail folder, I expect to see all the messages, rather
than just the ones for that are new.  I prefer to delete messages
myself, rather than have them expire.  I prefer to have my messages
ordered by date rather than by perceived importance.

I realize that I have all those options in Gnus.  However, those are
all working against how Gnus works.  I prefer swimming downstream.

I switched to WL because at my company, we use imap, and have for a
while.  Until two months ago, I would use fetchmail+procmail to
download, fold, spindle, and mutilate my mail.  I would then use VM to
read it.

I switched to WL because it works with imap, as opposed to VM, which
works in spite of imap.  I can now keep my mail on the server, and
read the 1% of windows-only messages I care about in Thunderbird.

I also use nnimap on an experimental basis.  However, it is painfully
slow to enter a group.  For example, right now, my primary inbox shows
15382 messages total.  It's sparse -- there are only 707 actual
messages.

Every time I enter it, it takes between 25 and 30 seconds to generate
the threaded summary.  That's a long time.  I'm running on a 4-way
2.8GHz 6GB unloaded linux box.

This makes it effective unusable, since I want to see all my mail, and
not just the new mail.

VM and WL optimize summary creation by caching the summary.  If I get
new mail, either one places it in the proper position, so the time
spent is proportional to the amount of new mail, rather than the total
amount of mail.

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.

-- 
Colin

Re: Gnus vs Wanderlust

[Miles Bader]

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

Re: Gnus vs Wanderlust

[Katsumi Yamaoka]

>>>>> In <87zn7mvrcl.fsf@tc-1-100.kawasaki.gol.ne.jp>
>>>>>	Miles Bader <miles@gnu.org> wrote:

> 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.

That's right.  Using softwares other than Gnus is a burden to me.
However, their work of art sometimes gives me a strong inspiration.
Conversely, they also study Gnus eagerly and have taken the good
features to Wanderlust.  I'm maintaining VM and Wanderlust so that
they can always be used in my system. :)
-- 
Katsumi Yamaoka <yamaoka@jpl.org>
;; VM stands for View Mail but WL doesn't stand for vieW maiL.

Re: Gnus vs Wanderlust

[Miles Bader]

Katsumi Yamaoka <yamaoka@jpl.org> writes:
> That's right.  Using softwares other than Gnus is a burden to me.
> However, their work of art sometimes gives me a strong inspiration.
> Conversely, they also study Gnus eagerly and have taken the good
> features to Wanderlust.  I'm maintaining VM and Wanderlust so that
> they can always be used in my system. :)

I agree, that there's definitely a place for other mail (and news!)
software in emacs, as people's tastes vary, and some just don't like
Gnus at all.   :-O

Especially, some people like something very simple like rmail, and it
might be hard to make Gnus be like that (I'm not sure... :-).

I just think the `mail and news are _different_' argument is way
overused....

-Miles
-- 
Fast, small, soon; pick any 2.

Re: Gnus vs Wanderlust

[colin.rafferty]

Miles Bader wrote:
> 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_.  

I think that from the implementation side, the shared behavior is
huge, but on the user end, for me at least, I approach reading mail
and reading news very differently.

> It seems bizarre to say "Oh just implement a completely new system!"
> instead of just fixing the problems with Gnus.

That's the advantage of just being a user.

> 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.

Having written, and then reread my own article, I've really thought
about why it is that I'm not using Gnus for mail, given that I have a
imap server.

I realize that I agree with you.  The only true problem is Summary
generation.  Everything else is configurable.

So how can we fix this?

I have 707 messages in a range of 15382 on my imap server.  I don't
care that the first time I ever read this takes 45 seconds to load.
That's 15 seconds to get the headers from the server, and 30 seconds
to generate the summary.

What I care about is if I receive one more message, while it has
cached the information about the previous 707 messages, so the server
download is negligible, it still takes 30 seconds to regenerate a
summary that is being trivially changed.

There are two basic problems with how Gnus does this:

1. It does not cache summary layout information.  When it builds a
   summary, it has to start from scratch.  WL always caches, and VM is
   optionally able to cache.

2. Its method of reloading a group is to tear down the summary and lay
   it out again, rather than applying a delta.  WL and VM both use
   deltas, so updates are immediate.

Both of these choices make a lot of sense for newsgroups, since in
general, what was in the summary before has already been read, and the
user won't be interested in it again.  However, with regular mail, you
want to see everything, so it doesn't make sense.

So what we need is options that allow us to fix those two problems:

1. Optionally allow for caching of the summary, so it can quickly be
   rebuilt.

2. Optionally allow M-g to apply deltas rather than tear-down and
   build-up.

Note that if we implement item 1, then item 2 becomes less necessary.

-- 
Colin

Re: Gnus vs Wanderlust

[Jochen Küpper]

Jumping in here only to give a somewhat different view. I still agree
that improved summary generation would be great.

On Wed, 02 Jun 2004 11:26:57 -0400 colin rafferty wrote:

colin> Both of these choices make a lot of sense for newsgroups, since in
colin> general, what was in the summary before has already been read, and the
colin> user won't be interested in it again.  However, with regular mail, you
colin> want to see everything, so it doesn't make sense.

I mainly use Gnus as a MUA and use it for that reason. I would be
perfectly happy to read the few newsgroups I look at using anything.

I have fairly large mail-groups with archived stuff that I always
never need. A typical group for me could contain 500 or 2500 messages,
most of which are "old". Then there might be 10, sometimes 50 ticked
articles I keep "visible" because they require a reaction at some
point or another. In addition there are of course often 1--50 new
messages when I enter a group. Overall there are typically 10--50
messages to be shown in the summary... Not so bad. (Especially not so
bad for my brain wading through a group. With the full list of
messages I would go mad.)

Then I wanna check an old email I now I stored. Normally it is obvious
what group it is in, so I might go there and simply ask for all
articles, then limit it to author or subject or search the messages --
this (i.e. opening with all messages) can be horribly slow, maybe also
because often message numbers are sparse; however, it doesn't happen
too often. So I can live with some delay here...

In the end hiding articles and that for me is "added functionality"
most MUAs don't provide.

Greetings,
Jochen
-- 
Einigkeit und Recht und Freiheit                http://www.Jochen-Kuepper.de
    Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité                GnuPG key: CC1B0B4D
        (Part 3 you find in my messages before fall 2003.)

Re: Gnus vs Wanderlust

[Kai Grossjohann]

colin.rafferty@morganstanley.com writes:

> There are two basic problems with how Gnus does this:
>
> 1. It does not cache summary layout information.  When it builds a
>    summary, it has to start from scratch.  WL always caches, and VM is
>    optionally able to cache.

The reason is that new articles might change a lot in the summary
buffer.  Note that you can display things like thread score, and if a
thread gains a message, its score will change...

> 2. Its method of reloading a group is to tear down the summary and lay
>    it out again, rather than applying a delta.  WL and VM both use
>    deltas, so updates are immediate.

Perhaps `/ N' does useful things?

Kai

Re: Gnus vs Wanderlust

[colin.rafferty]

Kai Grossjohann wrote:
> colin.rafferty@morganstanley.com writes:

>> There are two basic problems with how Gnus does this:

>> 1. It does not cache summary layout information.  When it builds a
>>    summary, it has to start from scratch.  WL always caches, and VM is
>>    optionally able to cache.

> The reason is that new articles might change a lot in the summary
> buffer.  Note that you can display things like thread score, and if a
> thread gains a message, its score will change...

I understand completely.  While newsgroups and discussion lists are
something that I would want to score, and only show the unread
articles, I do not want any funky sorting in my primary inbox other
than sort by date and use threads.

>> 2. Its method of reloading a group is to tear down the summary and lay
>>    it out again, rather than applying a delta.  WL and VM both use
>>    deltas, so updates are immediate.

> Perhaps `/ N' does useful things?

It would have been nice.  If it really just updated the summary, I
would have been able to switch to Gnus.

Unfortunately, while it doesn't quit the group and reenter it, it
still rebuilds the Summary.

-- 
Colin

Re: Gnus vs Wanderlust

[Kai Grossjohann]

colin.rafferty@morganstanley.com writes:

> Unfortunately, while [`/ N'] doesn't quit the group and reenter it,
> it still rebuilds the Summary.

Darn.

Kai

Re: Gnus vs Wanderlust

[Miles Bader]

colin.rafferty@morganstanley.com writes:
> 1. It does not cache summary layout information.  When it builds a
>    summary, it has to start from scratch.

Is this actually a problem?  Judging from what I see, the great bulk of
the time is _not_ in summary generation, but rather getting info from
the server (which is where the sparse-range problems show up too).

[My computer's pretty slow by contemporary standards too -- a 450MHz
pentium]

I suppose one could try to cache and incrementally update summaries, but
summary-generation is already so fast, even for very large groups, that
it might make more sense to investigate whether it could be made even
faster (maybe even with some new emacs primitives).

Having `in between' summary generation might be nice too, especially
when just updating a summary buffer with M-g -- for instance, delete and
regenerate all threads where anything changed (message disappeared,
message added ...) would probably be very fast, as in a large group,
this would avoid regenerating most of the summary.

-Miles
-- 
Next to fried food, the South has suffered most from oratory.
  			-- Walter Hines Page

Re: Gnus vs Wanderlust

[Lloyd Zusman]

Miles Bader <miles@gnu.org> writes:

> colin.rafferty@morganstanley.com writes:
>> 1. It does not cache summary layout information.  When it builds a
>>    summary, it has to start from scratch.
>
> Is this actually a problem?  Judging from what I see, the great bulk of
> the time is _not_ in summary generation, but rather getting info from
> the server (which is where the sparse-range problems show up too).

Well, I found that Wanderlust, which seems to cache and incrementally
update summaries, builds the summary buffer for a large (> 10000
messages) IMAP group much faster than Gnus does for the same IMAP group
... at least after the first time I enter the group when all the initial
summary building and caching takes place.

I understand that Wanderlust doesn't do as much of the fancy stuff that
Gnus does, but I am another person who doesn't use those features in my
IMAP groups.

Perhaps this behavior could become a group-specific option in Gnus
... ???


> [My computer's pretty slow by contemporary standards too -- a 450MHz
> pentium]
>
> I suppose one could try to cache and incrementally update summaries, but
> summary-generation is already so fast, even for very large groups, that
> it might make more sense to investigate whether it could be made even
> faster (maybe even with some new emacs primitives).

Well, I have empirical evidence that caching and incrementally updating
summaries can indeed make the entry into a large IMAP group considerably
faster.


> Having `in between' summary generation might be nice too, especially
> when just updating a summary buffer with M-g -- for instance, delete and
> regenerate all threads where anything changed (message disappeared,
> message added ...) would probably be very fast, as in a large group,
> this would avoid regenerating most of the summary.

Agreed.  In fact, this is probably closer to what Wanderlust does.


-- 
 Lloyd Zusman
 ljz@asfast.com
 God bless you.

Re: Gnus vs Wanderlust

[Jesper Harder]

Miles Bader <miles@gnu.org> writes:

> colin.rafferty@morganstanley.com writes:
>> 1. It does not cache summary layout information.  When it builds a
>>    summary, it has to start from scratch.
>
> Is this actually a problem?  

Yes, from my benchmarking it is.

> Judging from what I see, the great bulk of the time is _not_ in
> summary generation, but rather getting info from the server

That may well be the case if you're fetching from an external NNTP
server (it also depends on network speed, of course).  But if you're
fetching from nnml or a local server like Leafnode, summary generation
is the major bottleneck.

> [My computer's pretty slow by contemporary standards too -- a 450MHz
> pentium]

I can beat that: 220MHz :-(

> I suppose one could try to cache and incrementally update summaries,
> but summary-generation is already so fast, even for very large
> groups, that it might make more sense to investigate whether it
> could be made even faster (maybe even with some new emacs
> primitives).

Doing some low-level caching would should be quite easy by memoizing.
I'm thinking about stuff like `gnus-extract-address-components' which
is likely to be called on identical strings many times during summary
generation.

It probably won't buy us any earth-shattering speedups, but maybe 2-3%
here and there.

-- 
Jesper Harder                                <http://purl.org/harder/>

Re: Gnus vs Wanderlust

[Miles Bader]

Jesper Harder <harder@ifa.au.dk> writes:
> Doing some low-level caching would should be quite easy by memoizing.
> I'm thinking about stuff like `gnus-extract-address-components' which
> is likely to be called on identical strings many times during summary
> generation.

Yeah...

Has anyone recently profiled Gnus, and summary generation in particular?

I seem to recall (when I only read this mailing list sporadically) Lars
at one point going on a major "make Gnus faster" kick, which I think
resulted in some noticable gains, but I can't remember when, so maybe
that's already factored into the version everybody's using (I'm using
Gnus 5.10, and probably won't switch to anything later at least until
5.10 has been integrated into the Emacs tree).

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

Re: Gnus vs Wanderlust

[Simon Josefsson]

Miles Bader <miles@gnu.org> writes:

> colin.rafferty@morganstanley.com writes:
>> 1. It does not cache summary layout information.  When it builds a
>>    summary, it has to start from scratch.
>
> Is this actually a problem?  Judging from what I see, the great bulk of
> the time is _not_ in summary generation, but rather getting info from
> the server (which is where the sparse-range problems show up too).

Have you disabled the agent cache?  Otherwise, headers should be
cached, and entering a summary is bounded almost completely by CPU
generating the actual summary buffer.  For nnimap, Gnus wants to get
fresh flags from the server, which can take time if the server is
slow, but it doesn't normally download any headers or the like.  For
nntp, I think the entire delay is in summary buffer generation.

Re: Gnus vs Wanderlust

[Karl Chen]

When I set gnus-nov-is-evil, summary generation went from 5-10
minutes to very quick.  I think it might also have to do with
gnus-fetch-old-headers.



-- 
Karl 2004-06-04 09:40

Re: Gnus vs Wanderlust

[Kai Grossjohann]

Karl Chen <quarl@nospam.quarl.org> writes:

> When I set gnus-nov-is-evil, summary generation went from 5-10
> minutes to very quick.  I think it might also have to do with
> gnus-fetch-old-headers.

Are you saying that gnus-nov-is-evil was nil, and Gnus was slow?  And
then you set it to t, and Gnus was faster?

Very weird.

Kai

Re: Gnus vs Wanderlust

[Miles Bader]

Simon Josefsson <jas@extundo.com> writes:
> Have you disabled the agent cache?  Otherwise, headers should be
> cached, and entering a summary is bounded almost completely by CPU
> generating the actual summary buffer.

More a case of only recently having switched to Gnus 5.10; this agent
stuff is a bit new for me...

-Miles
-- 
自らを空にして、心を開く時、道は開かれる

Re: Gnus vs Wanderlust

[Simon Josefsson]

Miles Bader <miles@gnu.org> writes:

> Simon Josefsson <jas@extundo.com> writes:
>> Have you disabled the agent cache?  Otherwise, headers should be
>> cached, and entering a summary is bounded almost completely by CPU
>> generating the actual summary buffer.
>
> More a case of only recently having switched to Gnus 5.10; this agent
> stuff is a bit new for me...

It should all be enabled by default.  If entering a summary buffer
spends more time in the backend than generating the buffer, I think
something may be wrong.  (Possibly except for the first time you enter
the group, if your backend is slow.)  Two ELP examples below.

First example, entering largish group (~54k articles, C-u RET on
gmane.emacs.gnus.general):

Function Name                                                                 Call Count  Elapsed Time  Average Time
============================================================================  ==========  ============  ============
gnus-topic-read-group                                                         1           324.808153    324.808153
gnus-group-read-group                                                         1           324.808111    324.808111
gnus-summary-read-group                                                       1           324.808086    324.808086
gnus-summary-read-group-1                                                     1           324.808077    324.808077
gnus-summary-prepare                                                          1           268.163659    268.163659
gnus-summary-prepare-threads                                                  1           261.31438     261.31438
gnus-select-newsgroup                                                         1           31.384321     31.384321
gnus-fetch-headers                                                            1           30.020259     30.020259
gnus-get-newsgroup-headers-xover                                              1           29.773468     29.773468
gnus-possibly-score-headers                                                   1           21.369475     21.369475
gnus-score-headers                                                            1           21.368226     21.368226
gnus-score-string                                                             1           20.866281999  20.866281999
gnus-summary-limit-children                                                   53255       20.567338999  0.0003862048
gnus-summary-from-or-to-or-newsgroups                                         52944       11.471155999  0.0002166658
gnus-run-hooks                                                                52951       10.163973000  0.0001919505
gnus-score-string<                                                            500786      9.0681840000  1.810...e-05
gnus-extract-address-components                                               52944       8.7819879999  0.0001658731
gnus-sort-threads-1                                                           32267       8.5337919999  0.0002644742
gnus-summary-highlight-line                                                   52943       7.9408890000  0.0001499894
gnus-sort-threads                                                             1           4.780121      4.780121
gnus-put-text-property                                                        105891      3.8764590000  3.660...e-05
gnus-summary-initial-limit                                                    1           3.856649      3.856649
gnus-put-text-property-excluding-characters-with-faces                        52944       3.2309779999  6.102...e-05
gnus-make-threads                                                             1           1.616146      1.616146
gnus-thread-sort-by-number                                                    104481      1.5373799999  1.471...e-05
gnus-summary-remove-list-identifiers                                          1           0.489739      0.489739
gnus-retrieve-headers                                                         2           0.4828179999  0.2414089999
gnus-gather-threads-by-subject                                                1           0.413676      0.413676
gnus-not-ignore                                                               52922       0.3534540000  6.678...e-06
gnus-articles-to-read                                                         1           0.329798      0.329798
gnus-uncompress-range                                                         1           0.30818       0.30818
gnus-cache-retrieve-headers                                                   1           0.241464      0.241464
gnus-agent-retrieve-headers                                                   1           0.241275      0.241275
gnus-agent-get-undownloaded-list                                              1           0.095378      0.095378
gnus-thread-loop-p                                                            41419       0.0928350000  2.241...e-06
gnus-summary-highlight-line-0                                                 52943       0.0856470000  1.617...e-06
gnus-compute-unseen-list                                                      1           0.032678      0.032678
gnus-inverse-list-range-intersection                                          1           0.032666      0.032666
gnus-list-range-difference                                                    1           0.03265       0.03265
gnus-request-group                                                            1           0.029065      0.029065
nntp-request-group                                                            1           0.029011      0.029011
nntp-accept-process-output                                                    30          0.028588      0.0009529333
gnus-agent-uncached-articles                                                  1           0.02776       0.02776
gnus-summary-auto-select-subject                                              1           0.025996      0.025996
gnus-summary-first-unread-subject                                             1           0.025987      0.025987
gnus-summary-first-subject                                                    1           0.025938      0.025938

Second example, entering my private inbox for this month, with one
unread (spam), where the Group buffer claims 167 messages, but there
is only 57 real messages in it (the nnimap-request-group function
synchronize flags, and my server is on the other side of a slow
network connection -- and still it only amounts to half the slowness):

Function Name                                                                 Call Count  Elapsed Time  Average Time
============================================================================  ==========  ============  ============
gnus-topic-read-group                                                         1           4.250069      4.250069
gnus-group-read-group                                                         1           4.250028      4.250028
gnus-summary-read-group                                                       1           4.249988      4.249988
gnus-summary-read-group-1                                                     1           4.249978      4.249978
gnus-select-newsgroup                                                         1           3.452546      3.452546
gnus-request-group                                                            1           2.716559      2.716559
nnimap-request-group                                                          1           2.716509      2.716509
nnimap-request-update-info-internal                                           1           2.716264      2.716264
gnus-retrieve-headers                                                         3           2.109038      0.7030126666
gnus-summary-goto-article                                                     1           0.765913      0.765913
gnus-summary-display-article                                                  1           0.7658        0.7658
gnus-fetch-headers                                                            1           0.73178       0.73178
gnus-article-prepare                                                          1           0.721713      0.721713
gnus-cache-retrieve-headers                                                   1           0.718945      0.718945
gnus-agent-retrieve-headers                                                   1           0.718764      0.718764
gnus-request-article-this-buffer                                              1           0.70749       0.70749
gnus-request-article                                                          1           0.702861      0.702861
nnimap-request-article                                                        1           0.702816      0.702816
nnimap-request-article-part                                                   1           0.702795      0.702795
nnimap-retrieve-headers                                                       1           0.671219      0.671219
nnimap-retrieve-headers-from-server                                           1           0.67102       0.67102
gnus-run-hooks                                                                72          0.046985      0.0006525694
gnus-agent-fetch-selected-article                                             1           0.043144      0.043144
gnus-agent-fetch-articles                                                     1           0.042882      0.042882
gnus-agent-save-alist                                                         2           0.0396129999  0.0198064999

Re: Gnus vs Wanderlust

[Karl Chen]

Can you profile with a large inbox?  For me, small inboxes opened
quickly, but my main inbox has 200 MB and 10k messages, taking 10
minutes to open.  I think Gnus was doing some kind of iteration
through all messages.  (I don't use nnimap anymore because of this
hassle.)

-- 
Karl 2004-06-06 11:31

Re: Gnus vs Wanderlust

[Simon Josefsson]

Karl Chen <quarl@nospam.quarl.org> writes:

> Can you profile with a large inbox?  For me, small inboxes opened
> quickly, but my main inbox has 200 MB and 10k messages, taking 10
> minutes to open.  I think Gnus was doing some kind of iteration
> through all messages.  (I don't use nnimap anymore because of this
> hassle.)

Three examples follow.  First one is a C-u on INBOX with ~200000
articles according to *Group*, but in reality there is only one read
message, taking 9 seconds.  Second one C-u on my SpamAssassin folder
with ~47500 messages, almost all present, with ~2700 unread, taking 5
minutes.  Third one is a normal RET on my SpamAssassin folder, thus
showing the ~2700 unread articles, taking 10 seconds.  Notice that the
time spent in nnimap for the last two cases are about the same, 6
seconds.

(I use scoring, but I believe my setup otherwise is pretty standard.)

Function Name                                                                 Call Count  Elapsed Time  Average Time
============================================================================  ==========  ============  ============
gnus-topic-read-group                                                         1           8.569302      8.569302
gnus-group-read-group                                                         1           8.569276      8.569276
gnus-summary-read-group                                                       1           8.569256      8.569256
gnus-summary-read-group-1                                                     1           8.569246      8.569246
gnus-select-newsgroup                                                         1           8.552847      8.552847
gnus-cache-file-contents                                                      6           4.1983489999  0.6997248333
gnus-agent-load-alist                                                         4           4.151504      1.037876
gnus-agent-read-agentview                                                     3           4.150771      1.3835903333
gnus-retrieve-headers                                                         2           3.061173      1.5305865
gnus-request-group                                                            1           2.948282      2.948282
nnimap-request-group                                                          1           2.948238      2.948238
nnimap-request-update-info-internal                                           1           2.948019      2.948019
gnus-agent-possibly-alter-active                                              2           2.82466       1.41233
gnus-agent-get-local                                                          2           2.824583      1.4122915
gnus-fetch-headers                                                            1           1.5515780000  1.5515780000
gnus-cache-retrieve-headers                                                   1           1.530634      1.530634
gnus-agent-retrieve-headers                                                   1           1.53045       1.53045
gnus-agent-uncached-articles                                                  1           1.514515      1.514515
gnus-update-read-articles                                                     1           1.334155      1.334155
gnus-get-unread-articles-in-group                                             1           1.333978      1.333978
gnus-uncompress-range                                                         2           0.779337      0.3896685
gnus-articles-to-read                                                         1           0.466344      0.466344
gnus-sorted-difference                                                        2           0.29461       0.147305
nnimap-possibly-change-group                                                  2           0.258932      0.129466
gnus-set-difference                                                           1           0.214942      0.214942
gnus-make-hashtable                                                           4           0.1764200000  0.0441050000
gnus-agent-get-undownloaded-list                                              1           0.075068      0.075068
gnus-killed-articles                                                          1           0.067851      0.067851
gnus-agent-load-local                                                         2           0.047461      0.0237305

Function Name                                                                 Call Count  Elapsed Time  Average Time
============================================================================  ==========  ============  ============
gnus-topic-read-group                                                         1           303.767334    303.767334
gnus-group-read-group                                                         1           303.767305    303.767305
gnus-summary-read-group                                                       1           303.767284    303.767284
gnus-summary-read-group-1                                                     1           303.767274    303.767274
gnus-summary-prepare                                                          1           191.89391     191.89391
gnus-summary-prepare-threads                                                  1           177.632608    177.632608
gnus-select-newsgroup                                                         1           94.833538     94.833538
gnus-fetch-headers                                                            1           87.544199     87.544199
gnus-get-newsgroup-headers-xover                                              1           87.149547     87.149547
gnus-possibly-score-headers                                                   1           13.255379     13.255379
gnus-score-headers                                                            1           13.254291     13.254291
gnus-score-string                                                             1           12.985546     12.985546
gnus-sort-threads                                                             1           11.593148     11.593148
gnus-sort-threads-1                                                           1           11.590807     11.590807
gnus-run-hooks                                                                47426       9.7569230000  0.0002057294
gnus-summary-highlight-line                                                   47403       8.0100210000  0.0001689770
gnus-summary-from-or-to-or-newsgroups                                         47403       7.5135199999  0.0001585030
gnus-request-group                                                            1           6.039515      6.039515
nnimap-request-group                                                          1           6.039467      6.039467
nnimap-request-update-info-internal                                           1           6.039236      6.039236
gnus-thread-sort-by-number                                                    441960      5.6269370000  1.273...e-05
gnus-extract-address-components                                               47403       5.4056780000  0.0001140366
gnus-score-string<                                                            415224      5.3379850000  1.285...e-05
gnus-put-text-property                                                        94828       3.4712629999  3.660...e-05
gnus-put-text-property-excluding-characters-with-faces                        47403       2.8794749999  6.074...e-05
gnus-summary-initial-limit                                                    1           2.360444      2.360444
gnus-gather-threads-by-subject                                                1           1.506488      1.506488
gnus-summary-goto-article                                                     1           1.39714       1.39714
gnus-summary-display-article                                                  1           1.396983      1.396983
gnus-set-difference                                                           1           0.961172      0.961172
gnus-article-prepare                                                          1           0.890988      0.890988
gnus-sort-gathered-threads                                                    1           0.8835729999  0.8835729999
gnus-request-article-this-buffer                                              1           0.856863      0.856863
gnus-request-article                                                          2           0.853784      0.426892
nnimap-request-article                                                        2           0.85365       0.426825
nnimap-request-article-part                                                   2           0.8535959999  0.4267979999
gnus-retrieve-headers                                                         2           0.7843359999  0.3921679999
nnimap-possibly-change-group                                                  4           0.5283100000  0.1320775000
gnus-agent-load-alist                                                         4           0.5263519999  0.1315879999
gnus-cache-file-contents                                                      7           0.526071      0.075153
gnus-agent-read-agentview                                                     2           0.525609      0.2628045
gnus-agent-fetch-selected-article                                             1           0.505478      0.505478
gnus-agent-fetch-articles                                                     1           0.504518      0.504518
gnus-agent-save-alist                                                         1           0.459549      0.459549
gnus-summary-highlight-line-0                                                 47403       0.4439959999  9.366...e-06
gnus-cache-retrieve-headers                                                   1           0.392216      0.392216
gnus-agent-retrieve-headers                                                   1           0.3920280000  0.3920280000
gnus-agent-get-undownloaded-list                                              1           0.345233      0.345233
gnus-summary-limit-children                                                   47401       0.3448189999  7.274...e-06
gnus-agent-possibly-alter-active                                              2           0.2930589999  0.1465294999
gnus-agent-get-local                                                          2           0.292991      0.1464955
gnus-make-threads                                                             1           0.271826      0.271826
gnus-agent-uncached-articles                                                  1           0.2620940000  0.2620940000
gnus-summary-remove-list-identifiers                                          1           0.2241619999  0.2241619999
nnheader-insert-file-contents                                                 4           0.107867      0.02696675
nnheader-insert-nov-file                                                      1           0.107625      0.107625
gnus-uncompress-range                                                         2           0.102823      0.0514115
gnus-make-hashtable                                                           2           0.085705      0.0428525
gnus-correct-substring                                                        4293        0.0689070000  1.605...e-05
gnus-mime-display-part                                                        6           0.0547060000  0.0091176666
gnus-not-ignore                                                               47401       0.0503280000  1.061...e-06
gnus-article-prepare-display                                                  2           0.040916      0.020458
gnus-display-mime                                                             2           0.039956      0.019978
gnus-articles-to-read                                                         1           0.036034      0.036034

Function Name                                                                 Call Count  Elapsed Time  Average Time
============================================================================  ==========  ============  ============
gnus-topic-select-group                                                       1           9.574398      9.574398
gnus-group-select-group                                                       1           9.574354      9.574354
gnus-group-read-group                                                         1           9.574346      9.574346
gnus-summary-read-group                                                       1           9.57431       9.57431
gnus-summary-read-group-1                                                     1           9.5743        9.5743
gnus-select-newsgroup                                                         1           7.246213      7.246213
gnus-request-group                                                            1           5.931924      5.931924
nnimap-request-group                                                          1           5.931877      5.931877
nnimap-request-update-info-internal                                           1           5.93165       5.93165
gnus-set-difference                                                           1           2.021512      2.021512
gnus-summary-prepare                                                          1           1.5937109999  1.5937109999
gnus-retrieve-headers                                                         2           1.388105      0.6940525
gnus-summary-prepare-threads                                                  1           1.287982      1.287982
gnus-fetch-headers                                                            1           1.269531      1.269531
gnus-cache-retrieve-headers                                                   1           0.694133      0.694133
gnus-agent-retrieve-headers                                                   1           0.693878      0.693878
gnus-possibly-score-headers                                                   1           0.614546      0.614546
gnus-score-headers                                                            1           0.613382      0.613382
gnus-score-string                                                             1           0.588435      0.588435
gnus-get-newsgroup-headers-xover                                              1           0.57299       0.57299
gnus-agent-uncached-articles                                                  1           0.5097400000  0.5097400000
gnus-agent-load-alist                                                         2           0.4896520000  0.2448260000
gnus-cache-file-contents                                                      4           0.4894869999  0.1223717499
gnus-agent-read-agentview                                                     1           0.4891529999  0.4891529999
gnus-uncompress-range                                                         1           0.271217      0.271217
gnus-sort-threads                                                             1           0.181381      0.181381
gnus-sort-threads-1                                                           1           0.179006      0.179006
nnheader-insert-file-contents                                                 3           0.16395       0.0546500000
nnheader-insert-nov-file                                                      1           0.163895      0.163895
gnus-score-string<                                                            16424       0.1511320000  9.201...e-06
gnus-gather-threads-by-subject                                                1           0.118268      0.118268
gnus-put-text-property                                                        5481        0.1178490000  2.150...e-05