From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.emacs.gnus.general/49863 Path: main.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Michel Schinz Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.gnus.general Subject: Re: road warrior trying to simplify a mail setup Date: Fri, 07 Feb 2003 08:18:55 +0100 Sender: owner-ding@hpc.uh.edu Message-ID: References: <86fzr2ek0j.fsf@red.stonehenge.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: main.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: main.gmane.org 1044602301 20076 80.91.224.249 (7 Feb 2003 07:18:21 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@main.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 7 Feb 2003 07:18:21 +0000 (UTC) Return-path: Original-Received: from malifon.math.uh.edu ([129.7.128.13]) by main.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 18h2m9-0005DL-00 for ; Fri, 07 Feb 2003 08:18:17 +0100 Original-Received: from sina.hpc.uh.edu ([129.7.128.10] ident=lists) by malifon.math.uh.edu with esmtp (Exim 3.20 #1) id 18h2nD-0002iG-00; Fri, 07 Feb 2003 01:19:23 -0600 Original-Received: by sina.hpc.uh.edu (TLB v0.09a (1.20 tibbs 1996/10/09 22:03:07)); Fri, 07 Feb 2003 01:20:17 -0600 (CST) Original-Received: from sclp3.sclp.com (sclp3.sclp.com [66.230.238.2]) by sina.hpc.uh.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with SMTP id BAA20848 for ; Fri, 7 Feb 2003 01:19:59 -0600 (CST) Original-Received: (qmail 24369 invoked by alias); 7 Feb 2003 07:18:58 -0000 Original-Received: (qmail 24364 invoked from network); 7 Feb 2003 07:18:58 -0000 Original-Received: from quimby.gnus.org (80.91.224.244) by 66.230.238.6 with SMTP; 7 Feb 2003 07:18:58 -0000 Original-Received: from news by quimby.gnus.org with local (Exim 3.12 #1 (Debian)) id 18h2uC-0000jI-00 for ; Fri, 07 Feb 2003 08:26:36 +0100 Original-To: ding@gnus.org Original-Path: not-for-mail Original-Newsgroups: gnus.ding Original-Lines: 71 Original-NNTP-Posting-Host: lamppc3.epfl.ch Original-X-Trace: quimby.gnus.org 1044602796 2807 128.178.154.5 (7 Feb 2003 07:26:36 GMT) Original-X-Complaints-To: usenet@quimby.gnus.org Original-NNTP-Posting-Date: 7 Feb 2003 07:26:36 GMT User-Agent: Gnus/5.090007 (Oort Gnus v0.07) Emacs/21.2 (i686-pc-linux-gnu) Cancel-Lock: sha1:mF7184X28k8S5h9FudoX83/dy8U= Precedence: list X-Majordomo: 1.94.jlt7 Xref: main.gmane.org gmane.emacs.gnus.general:49863 X-Report-Spam: http://spam.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.gnus.general:49863 merlyn@stonehenge.com (Randal L. Schwartz) writes: [...] > I understand there's an offline reader mode, but I'm not sure how > that would work for my setup. Would I need to set up an IMAP server, > and could that let me access unanswered email both on and off the > box? I have a pretty similar setup as yours (Mac laptop, not always connected, Linux box at work, always connected, and occasional need to read my mail from an Internet cafe). I have been using IMAP to handle all that for almost two years now and I've been pretty happy with my setup. Let me describe it quickly. On my Linux box, which is always online, I use Gnus to read my mail, in "online" mode. That is, I never tested Gnus in offline mode (with agent) and cannot say whether it works well or not. It does, however, play nicely with other IMAP clients which also access the mailboxes. On my Mac laptop, I use Apple's Mail.app, which works great in offline mode. I can do whatever I want with my mails (move them around, reply to them, delete them) and as soon as I reconnect to the net, the local modifications are propagated to the server. When I'm in an Internet cafe, I access my mailboxes through Horde's IMP client (http://www.horde.org/imp/), which is a pretty nice Web interface to IMAP servers. These three clients all interacted pretty well until now, at least I didn't have any major problems in the previous two years. There are, however, some minor glitches. The major one is mail splitting. Gnus, Mail.app and IMP all have ways to sort mail, but of course they are not compatible. Which means that you either have to install an IMAP server with server-side splitting, or have to find another way. I didn't experiment with server-side splitting, but I fear that the solutions available now (i.e. SIEVE) are not powerful enough to filter SPAM using external tools (SpamAssassin or whatever). I've been thinking about a solution to this problem for some time now, but did not implement it yet. The idea would be to have an IMAP splitting client running all the time on my Linux box. The client would periodically check for new mails, and move it to the appropriate IMAP folder(s). Then I would disable all rules in all my other clients, and let them be passive in that respect. The main problem with writing such a tool is that the IMAP protocol is a real pain to use. That said, I seem to remember that a client library exists for Perl. Another problem is flags. Flags are stored on the IMAP server, of course, and while most important flags (e.g. "read", "answered", ...) are standardised, several clients use their own flags. Gnus, for example, uses a flag called "gnus-expire" to mark expired messages. Apple's Mail.app uses "NotJunk", "Junk" and "JunkRecorded" flags to handle spam. No big deal really, but the fact is that from Mail.app or Horde I cannot mark mail to be expired by Gnus. And from Gnus I cannot mark spam in a way recognised by Mail.app (well, with some elisp code I certainly could). The third problem (a small one) is special folders. Gnus, Mail.app and IMP all have their own idea about where to archive sent mails, what to do with deleted mails, and where to put drafts. Most clients enable you to configure the IMAP folder to use for these tasks, though, so it's a minor issue really. Michel.