Re: some mail annoyances

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

Dmitry Yaitskov <dimas@home.com> writes:

> I for example want a something that reads both mail and news, does it
> well, and is more or less intuitive for both. I do not spend all that
> much time reading either, and would much rather learn one good program
> than two. 

I spend much time on both, and Gnus is definitely optimized for the my
kind.  With the amount of mail I get, the traditional news reading
paradigm[1] simply works far better than mail the traditional mail
reading paradigm.

> Besides, news and mail are very closely related, so using one prog
> for both seems natural.

Having different paradigms for mail and news groups removes much of
the benefit from having a single program.

> Hence I think making gnus as intuitive as possible for both is "a
> good thing".

It was never a design goal to implement the traditional mail reading
paradigm in Gnus (which is what people mean by "intuitive").  While
you _can_ set it up to be used that way, it will be a fight.  I
strongly recommend either using a tool that was designed for that
purpose, or even better, start using Gnus as it was designed.  The
news readign paradigm _is_ very powerful, and you will not have to
switch paradigm each time you switch between mail and news groups any
more.

> Whereas I do not have a strong opinion about renumbering the messages, 
> I honestly don't see how the impossibility of renumbering usenet
> messages is relevant to the option of renumbering mail messages in
> one's own folder.

Again, it is about how you think about the messages, not about the
particular feature.  If you think about the numbers as something you
should be concerned about, then you think the wrong way.  Gnus is
designed to make the numbers irrelevant, because it is designed for
news where you can't change them.

Yes, there are backend specific features.  What I'm talking about is
the underlying model.

Footnotes: 
[1]  Sorry for using that word, but I can't find a better word for
"the model of thinking about the messages."