From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.emacs.gnus.general/57804 Path: main.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: colin.rafferty@morganstanley.com Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.gnus.general Subject: Re: Gnus vs Wanderlust Date: Wed, 02 Jun 2004 11:26:57 -0400 Sender: ding-owner@lists.math.uh.edu Message-ID: References: <87zn7mvrcl.fsf@tc-1-100.kawasaki.gol.ne.jp> NNTP-Posting-Host: deer.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 (generated by SEMI 1.14.6 - "Maruoka") Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII X-Trace: sea.gmane.org 1086190103 416 80.91.224.253 (2 Jun 2004 15:28:23 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@sea.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 2 Jun 2004 15:28:23 +0000 (UTC) Keywords: summary,news,mail,server,seconds,reader,gnus,user Original-X-From: ding-owner+M6345@lists.math.uh.edu Wed Jun 02 17:28:10 2004 Return-path: Original-Received: from malifon.math.uh.edu ([129.7.128.13]) by deer.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 1BVXex-00014w-00 for ; Wed, 02 Jun 2004 17:28:07 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=lists.math.uh.edu) by malifon.math.uh.edu with smtp (Exim 3.20 #1) id 1BVXe4-0006Tt-00; Wed, 02 Jun 2004 10:27:12 -0500 Original-Received: from util2.math.uh.edu ([129.7.128.23]) by malifon.math.uh.edu with esmtp (Exim 3.20 #1) id 1BVXdw-0006TT-00 for ding@lists.math.uh.edu; Wed, 02 Jun 2004 10:27:04 -0500 Original-Received: from justine.libertine.org ([66.139.78.221] ident=postfix) by util2.math.uh.edu with esmtp (Exim 4.30) id 1BVXdu-0008SF-3n for ding@lists.math.uh.edu; Wed, 02 Jun 2004 10:27:02 -0500 Original-Received: from hqvsbh1.ms.com (hqvsbh1.ms.com [205.228.12.101]) by justine.libertine.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 49B723A004D for ; Wed, 2 Jun 2004 10:27:01 -0500 (CDT) Original-Received: from hqvsbh1.ms.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by localhost.ms.com (Postfix) with SMTP id 4C1605EE0 for ; Wed, 2 Jun 2004 11:26:58 -0400 (EDT) Original-Received: from ny37im01.ms.com (unknown [144.14.31.40]) by hqvsbh1.ms.com (internal Postfix) with ESMTP id 36FCE6977 for ; Wed, 2 Jun 2004 11:26:58 -0400 (EDT) Original-Received: from paias746.morganstanley.com (paias746 [144.14.107.41]) by ny37im01.ms.com (Sendmail MTA Hub) with ESMTP id i52FQv125444 for ; Wed, 2 Jun 2004 11:26:57 -0400 (EDT) Original-To: ding@gnus.org In-Reply-To: <87zn7mvrcl.fsf@tc-1-100.kawasaki.gol.ne.jp> User-Agent: Wanderlust/2.10.1 (Watching The Wheels) SEMI/1.14.6 (Maruoka) FLIM/1.14.6 (Marutamachi) APEL/10.6 XEmacs/21.4 (patch 12) (Portable Code) (i686-pc-linux) X-Y-Zippy: I'm in ATLANTIC CITY riding in a comfortable ROLLING CHAIR... X-Face: y,o:AU/bfCrS+zS/W"^puB!rT!G7?U1Mvp1Hd{6h^>X4@Xp5,|g+rG>4gv/iy^&x9`k#s!] X~{]Js>@A4c}4Z"Ct7=#1nPS:?mrWH8c#>$)>/Wc5yuX_OFO1(4cZM{LvsKWVQSl~/i>!n[ -B*i-alq[/m\bsdy;W4p(_ic;$BE.oG@eJf@sr#x#}FT<=H8Ozu%g;JpVz:v_~vt[>ef/Me Neo3~D^R]]*bB7{HB|E1$wfMzw Precedence: bulk Xref: main.gmane.org gmane.emacs.gnus.general:57804 X-Report-Spam: http://spam.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.gnus.general:57804 Miles Bader wrote: > colin.rafferty@morganstanley.com writes: >> I love Gnus as a news reader. I use it actively, and think it is the >> best news reader ever. However, the needs of a mail reader are >> different from a news reader. > I've always thought this was a very silly argument. I also find that I > have slightly different preferences for mail and news, but the amount of > _shared_ behavior is _huge_. I think that from the implementation side, the shared behavior is huge, but on the user end, for me at least, I approach reading mail and reading news very differently. > It seems bizarre to say "Oh just implement a completely new system!" > instead of just fixing the problems with Gnus. That's the advantage of just being a user. > the main problem I've had seems to be the same that you mention: it > deals poorly with sparse article ranges. Fixing this would go a > _long_ way towards making it perfect for me. Having written, and then reread my own article, I've really thought about why it is that I'm not using Gnus for mail, given that I have a imap server. I realize that I agree with you. The only true problem is Summary generation. Everything else is configurable. So how can we fix this? I have 707 messages in a range of 15382 on my imap server. I don't care that the first time I ever read this takes 45 seconds to load. That's 15 seconds to get the headers from the server, and 30 seconds to generate the summary. What I care about is if I receive one more message, while it has cached the information about the previous 707 messages, so the server download is negligible, it still takes 30 seconds to regenerate a summary that is being trivially changed. There are two basic problems with how Gnus does this: 1. It does not cache summary layout information. When it builds a summary, it has to start from scratch. WL always caches, and VM is optionally able to cache. 2. Its method of reloading a group is to tear down the summary and lay it out again, rather than applying a delta. WL and VM both use deltas, so updates are immediate. Both of these choices make a lot of sense for newsgroups, since in general, what was in the summary before has already been read, and the user won't be interested in it again. However, with regular mail, you want to see everything, so it doesn't make sense. So what we need is options that allow us to fix those two problems: 1. Optionally allow for caching of the summary, so it can quickly be rebuilt. 2. Optionally allow M-g to apply deltas rather than tear-down and build-up. Note that if we implement item 1, then item 2 becomes less necessary. -- Colin