Re: IMAP + Agent

[John Wiegley <jwiegley@gmail.com>]

>>>>> Richard Riley <rileyrg@googlemail.com> writes:

> I've posted numerous time about using Gnus with imap and agent using
> multiple email accounts at the same provider. It doesnt work. Each time the
> replies were vague, requently at odds with each other of the form "should
> work" or "IMAP doesn work with the agent". What is the real state of play
> these days? e.g

I was never able to get nnimap to play well enough with the Agent for me to
trust it.  I kept ending up with marks and unread counts going wonky, messages
not getting downloaded although I'd used J s and set my default agent category
predicate to `true', etc.

Recently I've approached e-mail Nirvana by using offlineimap with Dovecot
(using the full-text search backend with nnir) to essentially offload the
concept of "offlineness" from Gnus entirely.  Now my e-mail server is always
available, Internet or no.  In fact, I found this to be so much nicer in so
many ways that I've switched to using Leafnode for NNTP as well (and nnmairix
for doing article searches).  Now Gnus thinks the servers are always alive,
and there's no more puzzling.

If you're interested I could share configuration details with you, but there
is a definite learning curve to this approach.  On the other hand, once it's
all setup it's pretty bulletproof, with the added benefit that it conveys
"offlineness" to every other Mail and News reader you have.

John