Re: some mail annoyances

[Per Abrahamsen <abraham@dina.kvl.dk>]

Per Bothner <per@bothner.com> writes:

> * 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.

Not if you want to fetch new messages for several groups, I do that
often for foreign nntp groups.

> * 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.

M-g works in the summary buffer.

> * 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.

I haven't noticed that.

> * 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))

Use `E' for that.

> 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.

You can set `Expiry Wait' to `immidiate' and `Display' to `all' in the
group properties (G c).  

However, more important: Gnus is not mail reader.  It is a news
reader, which happens to handle mail as well.  As long as you keep
thinking in the news paradigm, Gnus is 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.

VM is an excellent mail reader, and in itself a good reason why Gnus
should keep working like a news reader.  If you want a mail reader
that works according to normal mail reader conventions, VM is there.
However, if you really want to treat your mailbox as a newsspool, Gnus
is the answer.  

> * 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 ...

You can't renumber the usenet messages, why should you be able to
renumber mail messages?  Makes no sense from the Gnus point of view.