Re: mail-sources versus select-methods

[Richard Riley <rileyrg@googlemail.com>]

david.goldberg6@verizon.net (Dave Goldberg) writes:

>>> Apples and oranges.  The two are complementary - there's no
>>> competition here.
>
>> But there is. You can achieve  the same thing using both. My Q is what s
>> best and why.

>
> Really?  How can you use a mail source without a select method?

I never suggested you can. I said you can read mail and news without
setting mail-sources. Local and remote afaik.

>
> I submit by my previous statement.  A select method (back end) is how you tell
> Gnus to read mail/news.  A mail source is how you tell Gnus to populate the back
> end if Gnus is going to be responsible for that.  It need not be.

My point is that you dont need to set mail-sources. It seems that it can
all be done in the select methods - my query is based on this point
only. Or can it?  I pointed out before that the mail-sources can include
imap, pop3 etc : all of which can also be put into the select method and
thus imap/pop3 are "mail sources" or "sources of mail". As I mentioned
before I have used gnus for a long time now and only recently user
mail-sources for the local system mail - I had been using only secondary
selects before for maildir, imap and pop3 access all of which are "mail
sources". Is this just a silly vocab issue I have I wonder?