Re: MS Outlook for mail server?

["Rupa Schomaker (list)" <rupa-list@rupa.com>]

Rolf Marvin BXe Lindgren <roffe@morgoth.uio.no> writes:

> [ Jack Vinson
> 
> | My company is moving to Outlook for all their mail and calendaring needs.
> | I am torn between the cool integrated nature of Outlook and our favorite
> | News/Mail reader.  What method does Outlook (with an Exchange server) use
> | to store mail?  Is this the imap issue that I have been ignoring because I
> | didn't think it applies to me?
> 
> you know, I just _think_ I'd be able to kill for the possibility to 
> use Gnus for reading MS Outlook mail.  has anybody, er, actually hacked
> the Lisp needed for an interface?

Outlook is a mail interface, and like gnus, supports multiple
backends.  It supports POP (and stored in a local DB), IMAP (stored in 
an IMAP server) and MAPI (corporate mode) which is what it uses to tie 
into Exchange (and potentially others).

Exchange is a mail/discussion server that has it's own proprietary
interface.  It also has an IMAP interface which can be used to get at
both your mail and the discussion groups (think of them as newsgroups).

I think you *could* use the nnimap backend for gnus to talk to
Exchange.  The problem is that Exchange (at least by default) has lots 
of group names with spaces in them (eg: Public Messages/sometopic)
which gnus simply cannot handle.  There was a thread going in the
nnimap list (with some patches) to munge the space into something else 
so that gnus could use them.

I don't use Exchange as my backend, but I do use an IMAP backend
(Cyrus's imap server).  I had to move a bunch of my old folders that
had spaces in them to be gnus friendly -- that is not very nice.
ALso, I can create folders in other email clients that simply won't be 
noticed by gnus -- also not a very nice thing.

Even with some of the performance "issues" in nnimap pgnus+nnimap is
the "best" imap client I can find.  It *could* be better though...

-- 
Rupa (rupa@rupa.com for normal email)
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