Re: Mutt/Gnus hybrid for mail?

[Peter Davis <pfd@pfdstudio.com>]

Peter Münster <pmlists@free.fr> writes:

> On Mon, Dec 08 2014, Peter Davis wrote:
>
>> 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.)
>
> This sets the expire mark with the "d" key and goes to next message:
>

Thanks, Peter. I'll give that a try.

>
>> I have not managed to get gnus to display previously read messages in a
>> thread automatically,
>
> You mean, display all messages of a thread, when it has at least one new
> message?  I'm sure, that this is possible and you would get a solution
> here...
>
> If you want it with a key-press: it's "A T".
>

Yes the 'A T' sequence works, but it should be possible to have the
whole thread included for each new message when I open the
group/folder. The gnus-fetch-old-headers is supposed to do that, but I
have not managed to make it work. Also, mutt maintains a header cache so
that this is very fast. I'm not aware of a way to do this in gnus.

>
> Elisp is very useful, not only in Gnus. And you can get help here.
>

Granted. I wish I had time to learn it.

>
>> Anyway, customatizations are unlikely to improve performance. Mutt
>> seems faster at downloading messages, etc.
>
> Perhaps. But the Mutt-macros are *very* limited and when you want to
> display something else than plain text, Mutt needs external programs,
> where the key-bindings are completely different and you can't control Mutt
> anymore...

True. I do have some mutt macros that pipe messages to perl scripts to
do what I need. But yes, displaying HTML, etc. is very limited, which
was why I started this thread. (BTW, I think gnus uses w3m for HTML, but
not with the -dump switch.)

> After having switched from Mutt to Gnus, I've just thought:
> "Why haven't I done that earlier...?!"

I've used a slew of mail clients over the years, but have yet to find
one that has it all. Probably gnus is the most customizable, and
therefore potentially the best, but it takes a fair bit of work to get
everything set. I'm always concerned that when I move to another
machine, I'll have to figure it out all over again.

> I'm sure, that you'll spend more time integrating Mutt into Emacs the
> way you like, than reading the Gnus manual.

Probably. That's why I was hoping to find an existing solution. But
maybe I should just stick with gnus and gradually figure out how to make
it work the way I want.

-pd