gmail-like mail backend?

gmail-like mail backend?

[Miles Bader]

I've come to really like the gmail notion of "groups" (really called
"labels") actually just being views into a big pool of messages, so that
a single message can easily exist in many groups, and things that happen
to that message (mark it as read, delete it) are immediately visible in
all relevant groups.  Another nice thing (in general) is that it ends to
operate on threads as a whole, rather than individual messages; e.g., if
you add a particular "label" to a thread, subsequent replies that arrive
in that same thread show up in all relevant labels/groups, without the
need to add classify them.  Moving threads around is very lightweight.

I wonder how hard would it be to have somethings niceness in gnus?

Gnus already has the notion of crossposts from news, but the pervasive
use of group-specific article-number ranges seems somewhat problematic.

Anyway just food for thought.  I like using Emacs to read email a lot
more than using a web-browser, but Gnus is seeming a bit clunky at the
moment compared to gmail...

-Miles
-- 
"Suppose we've chosen the wrong god. Every time we go to church we're
just making him madder and madder." -- Homer Simpson

Re: gmail-like mail backend?

[David Abrahams]

Miles Bader <miles@lsi.nec.co.jp> writes:

> I've come to really like the gmail notion of "groups" (really called
> "labels") actually just being views into a big pool of messages, so that
> a single message can easily exist in many groups, and things that happen
> to that message (mark it as read, delete it) are immediately visible in
> all relevant groups.  Another nice thing (in general) is that it ends to
> operate on threads as a whole, rather than individual messages; e.g., if
> you add a particular "label" to a thread, subsequent replies that arrive
> in that same thread show up in all relevant labels/groups, without the
> need to add classify them.  Moving threads around is very lightweight.
>
> I wonder how hard would it be to have somethings niceness in gnus?
>
> Gnus already has the notion of crossposts from news, but the pervasive
> use of group-specific article-number ranges seems somewhat problematic.
>
> Anyway just food for thought.  I like using Emacs to read email a lot
> more than using a web-browser, but Gnus is seeming a bit clunky at the
> moment compared to gmail...

Something like this has been a biggie on my list of desired features
for a long time, even before gmail came out.  It's a bit more
complicated in Gnus I think, because you don't have the benefit of
actually having a single pool of messages -- they're scattered across
local stores, IMAP servers, and NNTP servers.  But it's a worthy goal
anyway.  Unfortunately I haven't been able to learn enough about Gnus
to approach hacking it at that level... yet.

-- 
Dave Abrahams
Boost Consulting
www.boost-consulting.com

Re: gmail-like mail backend?

[Ted Zlatanov]

On Wed, 09 Feb 2005, miles@lsi.nec.co.jp wrote:

> I've come to really like the gmail notion of "groups" (really called
> "labels") actually just being views into a big pool of messages, so that
> a single message can easily exist in many groups, and things that happen
> to that message (mark it as read, delete it) are immediately visible in
> all relevant groups.  Another nice thing (in general) is that it ends to
> operate on threads as a whole, rather than individual messages; e.g., if
> you add a particular "label" to a thread, subsequent replies that arrive
> in that same thread show up in all relevant labels/groups, without the
> need to add classify them.  Moving threads around is very lightweight.
> 
> I wonder how hard would it be to have somethings niceness in gnus?
> 
> Gnus already has the notion of crossposts from news, but the pervasive
> use of group-specific article-number ranges seems somewhat problematic.
> 
> Anyway just food for thought.  I like using Emacs to read email a lot
> more than using a web-browser, but Gnus is seeming a bit clunky at the
> moment compared to gmail...

Look at my previous posts in ding on "message labels" that someone was
going to implement.  This can be done with the registry - just
associate the labels as extra data with the message ID, and you can
find the message by the message ID.

Ted

Re: gmail-like mail backend?

[Adam Sjøgren]

On 10 Feb 2005 12:48:56 -0500, Ted wrote:

> On Wed, 09 Feb 2005, miles@lsi.nec.co.jp wrote:

>> Anyway just food for thought. I like using Emacs to read email a
>> lot more than using a web-browser, but Gnus is seeming a bit clunky
>> at the moment compared to gmail...

> Look at my previous posts in ding on "message labels" that someone
> was going to implement.

(I think I was babbling about that, but I haven't gotten around to
trying to actually do something. Lack of time and knowledge on my
part).

> This can be done with the registry - just associate the labels as
> extra data with the message ID, and you can find the message by the
> message ID.

How would this work in conjunction with setting
gnus-registry-max-entries to something besides nil?

(I'd like to forget information about old spam, but I'd never ever
want to forget about labels I have assigned).


  Best regards,

-- 
 "I gotta go right now; someone is videotaping me in my       Adam Sjøgren
  spaceship"                                             asjo@koldfront.dk

Re: gmail-like mail backend?

[Ted Zlatanov]

On Fri, 11 Feb 2005, asjo@koldfront.dk wrote:

On 10 Feb 2005 12:48:56 -0500, Ted wrote:

>> Look at my previous posts in ding on "message labels" that someone
>> was going to implement.
> 
> (I think I was babbling about that, but I haven't gotten around to
> trying to actually do something. Lack of time and knowledge on my
> part).

No rush, Miles' proposal may work together with yours though.

>> This can be done with the registry - just associate the labels as
>> extra data with the message ID, and you can find the message by the
>> message ID.
> 
> How would this work in conjunction with setting
> gnus-registry-max-entries to something besides nil?
> 
> (I'd like to forget information about old spam, but I'd never ever
> want to forget about labels I have assigned).

I can fix gnus-registry-trim so it knows certain kinds of extra data
mean the article should not be expired when the registry is trimmed.

If you mean the article label should stay even after the article is
deleted, that can be arranged too.
gnus-registry-trim-articles-without-groups controls this right now.  I
actually fixed a bug related to this right now, as well.

Ted

Re: gmail-like mail backend?

[Ian Soboroff]

Miles Bader <miles@lsi.nec.co.jp> writes:

> I've come to really like the gmail notion of "groups" (really called
> "labels") actually just being views into a big pool of messages, so that
> a single message can easily exist in many groups, and things that happen
> to that message (mark it as read, delete it) are immediately visible in
> all relevant groups.  Another nice thing (in general) is that it ends to
> operate on threads as a whole, rather than individual messages; e.g., if
> you add a particular "label" to a thread, subsequent replies that arrive
> in that same thread show up in all relevant labels/groups, without the
> need to add classify them.  Moving threads around is very lightweight.

I've often thought about this, but in the context of nnir groups.
(Think dynamic labels.)  Unfortunately, it's hard to do anything
useful except read messages in an nnir group.  Likewise digest groups.

Ian