a faster Gnus?

a faster Gnus?

[Jack Vinson]

Hey Guys,

Someone made a comment a week or two ago that, essentially, Gnus was quite
slow compared to things like MS Outlook or Netscape's messenger.  The
person was talking about picking up mail (POP mail in my case), and thought
it seemed like Gnus was a turtle to these others being the hare.  

One thing, as far as mail goes, is that Gnus grabs the entire set of mail
at once before displaying it to the user.  With these other programs, they
seem to grab one at a time - displaying the new messages before all of them
are downloaded.  This may lead to some of the apparent speed.

There are plenty of great things about Gnus, and I would like to continue
using it, but if it is going to be so significantly slower, why bother?

Any thoughts?

-- 
JackVinson@Yahoo.com
Bart: I will not torment the emotionally frail.

Re: a faster Gnus?

[Johan Kullstam]

Jack Vinson <JackVinson@yahoo.com> writes:

> Hey Guys,
> 
> Someone made a comment a week or two ago that, essentially, Gnus was quite
> slow compared to things like MS Outlook or Netscape's messenger.  The
> person was talking about picking up mail (POP mail in my case), and thought
> it seemed like Gnus was a turtle to these others being the hare.  
> 
> One thing, as far as mail goes, is that Gnus grabs the entire set of mail
> at once before displaying it to the user.  With these other programs, they
> seem to grab one at a time - displaying the new messages before all of them
> are downloaded.  This may lead to some of the apparent speed.
> 
> There are plenty of great things about Gnus, and I would like to continue
> using it, but if it is going to be so significantly slower, why
> bother?

speed of reading your pop3 server is only important if you get *tons*
of email.  anyone receiving a ton of email will appreciate gnus
splitting methods and all around news treatment of mail.

-- 
J o h a n  K u l l s t a m
[kullstam@ne.mediaone.net]
Don't Fear the Penguin!

Re: a faster Gnus?

[Stainless Steel Rat]

* Jack Vinson <JackVinson@yahoo.com>  on Sat, 29 Apr 2000
| Any thoughts?

Yeah.
OX is compiled C++.
Gnus and pop3.el are Emacs-Lisp, and there is absoutely nothing in pop3.el
to eliminate bottlenecks.
-- 
Rat <ratinox@peorth.gweep.net>    \ Do not use Happy Fun Ball on concrete.
Minion of Nathan - Nathan says Hi! \ 
PGP Key: at a key server near you!  \ 

Re: a faster Gnus?

[Anders Melchiorsen]

Jack Vinson <JackVinson@yahoo.com> wrote:

> Someone made a comment a week or two ago that, essentially, Gnus was
> quite slow compared to things like MS Outlook or Netscape's
> messenger.  The person was talking about picking up mail (POP mail
> in my case), and thought it seemed like Gnus was a turtle to these
> others being the hare.

If it is only the matter of picking up mail, how does fetchmail
compare to these other programs?


-And

-- 
Gåsen gav et gæstebud
for grisene til jul.
Grisene fik gåsehud
da gåsen gav dem sul.

Re: a faster Gnus?

[Brian May]

>>>>> "Jack" == Jack Vinson <JackVinson@yahoo.com> writes:

    Jack> There are plenty of great things about Gnus, and I would
    Jack> like to continue using it, but if it is going to be so
    Jack> significantly slower, why bother?

I find Gnus to be rather slow when displaying complicated mail (eg a
20 page fax, mime encoded, sent via mail takes ages to display via
Gnus; not only that, but I can't do anything with xemacs until it has
finished).

Normally, speed is not a problem though. Not that I use pop though...

(of course, it was slower on my 486...)
-- 
Brian May <bmay@csse.monash.edu.au>

Re: a faster Gnus?

[Roman Belenov]

Jonas Steverud <d4jonas@dtek.chalmers.se> writes:

> Brian May <bmay@csse.monash.edu.au> writes:
> 
> [...]
> > but I can't do anything with xemacs until it has finished).
> 
> That is becourse Emacs is not multi-threaded and that won't happen
> since it is more work for both developers of Emacs and of elisp
> packages then what it's worth. (load-library "std-disc")

W3 seems to circumvent it somehow since it can download pages
asynchronously.

-- 
 							With regards, Roman.

Re: a faster Gnus?

[Daniel Pittman]

On 03 May 2000, Roman Belenov <roman@nstl.nnov.ru> wrote:

> Jonas Steverud <d4jonas@dtek.chalmers.se> writes:
> 
>> Brian May <bmay@csse.monash.edu.au> writes:
>> 
>> [...]
>> > but I can't do anything with xemacs until it has finished).
>> 
>> That is becourse Emacs is not multi-threaded and that won't happen
>> since it is more work for both developers of Emacs and of elisp
>> packages then what it's worth. (load-library "std-disc")
> 
> W3 seems to circumvent it somehow since it can download pages
> asynchronously.

That's done by using process filters on the network connections, and the
like, as well as breaking the work down into manageable chunks along the
way.

It's a decidedly non-trivial exercise to do, however.

        Daniel

-- 
Early to bed and early to rise, and you'll meet very few of our best people.
        -- George Ade

Re: a faster Gnus?

[William M. Perry]

"Daniel Pittman" <daniel@danann.net> writes:

> On 03 May 2000, Roman Belenov <roman@nstl.nnov.ru> wrote:
> 
> > Jonas Steverud <d4jonas@dtek.chalmers.se> writes:
> > 
> >> Brian May <bmay@csse.monash.edu.au> writes:
> >> 
> >> [...]
> >> > but I can't do anything with xemacs until it has finished).
> >> 
> >> That is becourse Emacs is not multi-threaded and that won't happen
> >> since it is more work for both developers of Emacs and of elisp
> >> packages then what it's worth. (load-library "std-disc")
> > 
> > W3 seems to circumvent it somehow since it can download pages
> > asynchronously.
> 
> That's done by using process filters on the network connections, and the
> like, as well as breaking the work down into manageable chunks along the
> way.
> 
> It's a decidedly non-trivial exercise to do, however.

If you get the general architecture down right, it actually isn't
horrendously painful.  The real pain in the ass for Emacs/W3 was doing
asynch retrievals of things like ftp, where I had to dig into the guts of
ange-ftp and efs to get things working correctly.  That and
gopher... UGGGGH... gopher.

-bp