From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.emacs.gnus.general/23429 Path: main.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Per Bothner Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.gnus.general Subject: some mail annoyances Date: 21 Jun 1999 17:36:24 -0700 Sender: owner-ding@hpc.uh.edu Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: coloc-standby.netfonds.no Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: main.gmane.org 1035161163 1977 80.91.224.250 (21 Oct 2002 00:46:03 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@main.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2002 00:46:03 +0000 (UTC) Cc: per@bothner.com Return-Path: Original-Received: from farabi.math.uh.edu (farabi.math.uh.edu [129.7.128.57]) by sclp3.sclp.com (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id UAA11443 for ; Mon, 21 Jun 1999 20:31:50 -0400 (EDT) Original-Received: from sina.hpc.uh.edu (lists@Sina.HPC.UH.EDU [129.7.3.5]) by farabi.math.uh.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) with ESMTP id TAB02355; Mon, 21 Jun 1999 19:31:19 -0500 (CDT) Original-Received: by sina.hpc.uh.edu (TLB v0.09a (1.20 tibbs 1996/10/09 22:03:07)); Mon, 21 Jun 1999 19:31:46 -0500 (CDT) Original-Received: from sclp3.sclp.com (root@sclp3.sclp.com [204.252.123.139]) by sina.hpc.uh.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id TAA28579 for ; Mon, 21 Jun 1999 19:31:36 -0500 (CDT) Original-Received: from magnus.bothner.com (root@adsl-216-102-199-253.dsl.snfc21.pacbell.net [216.102.199.253]) by sclp3.sclp.com (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id UAA11426 for ; Mon, 21 Jun 1999 20:30:37 -0400 (EDT) Original-Received: by bothner.com via sendmail from stdin id (Debian Smail3.2.0.102) for ding@gnus.org; Mon, 21 Jun 1999 17:36:25 -0700 (PDT) Original-To: ding@gnus.org Original-Lines: 55 User-Agent: Gnus/5.070084 (Pterodactyl Gnus v0.84) XEmacs/21.2(beta14) (Dionysos) Precedence: list X-Majordomo: 1.94.jlt7 Xref: main.gmane.org gmane.emacs.gnus.general:23429 X-Report-Spam: http://spam.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.gnus.general:23429 I switched to pgnus not too long ago, and it works fairly well for me. However, there are some user interface issues that ae rather annoying. (I'm currently using gnus 0.84.) * If in the Summary group, I do M-g in my mail group to check for new mail, after new mail is read, point does to the *following* group. That's silly default; point should stay at the group I just got more mail for. * As far as I can tell, there is no command to get new mail/news from the summary buffer. This means I have to quit the Summary buffer, type M-g, then back up, and *then* type space. As well as being inconvenient, it inefficient for Gnus to re-load the existing messages. * If I enter a group, point normally goes to the first unread message. But if (say) there is only a single new message, that message becomes the last line in the window, while point goes to the *middle* of the window. When the list of ticked messages is long, it starts showing the first old message, rather than the first new message. * In general, the Gnus defaults for mail are quite clumsy. For example, there should be a single command to delete (make expirable) messages and move to the next. I ended up doing: (add-hook 'gnus-summary-mode-hook 'my-alter-summary-map) (defun my-alter-summary-map () (local-set-key "d" 'gnus-summary-put-mark-as-expirable-next)) More generally, for mail the natural classification is old messages, new messages, and deleted messages. Once I have deleted a message, I normally don't want to see it. However, I would like to be able to see old messages. If I do plain space in the Group buffer, I only see new and ticked messages. But if I do ^U-space I get *all* the messages, including the expired ones. This means that to get what I consider normal behavior (as in most other MUAs) I must take one of two acrtions for each new message: Either tick it if I want to save it, or delete it (make expireable) otherwise. Sometimes I forget. This is not very friendly. * Bottom line: Gnus is not usable as a mail reader for non-hacker types. There are just too many options, there is no introductory manual, and the defaults are non-intuitive. Even setting it up so it suitable for non-hackers is difficult. I ended up setting up my boyfriend to use VM. He is not 100% happy with VM, but I don't see how gnus could be an option. That is a shame. * In there any commend to re-number the messages in a mail folder? I'm used to mhe, which would re-use numbers on expired messages, and when teh numbers approaches 10000, I would run an mh command to renumber the entire folder. Yes, this is an esthetic issue, not really important ... -- --Per Bothner bothner@pacbell.net http://home.pacbell.net/bothner/