New to GNUS troubles in figuring how to get rings rolling

New to GNUS troubles in figuring how to get rings rolling

[Björn Bidar via Announcements and discussions for GNUS, the GNU Emacs Usenet newsreader (in English)]

Hey,

I have been working on having Emails working inside Emacs.
I've looked into a few solutions which seem to be the most used.
These were offline mail solutions such as mu4e, those that can fetch
mail themselves like gnus or wanderlust.

My current setup is that I have multiple clients that all connect over
imap.
I want always sync the status of a message back to imap.
My imap server is a self hosted dovecot with postfix to send messages.

I'm trying gnus right now and faced some issues that I don't know on how
to continue on.



These are mostly imap related.
1. How can I take the read status from imap into gnus and vice versa?
2. I tried to use ~nnimap-use-namespaces~ however it doesn't work.
   My mail server supports the extension however the folders aren't
   split accordingly.
3. Can I make gnus design less archiaric?
4. Can I make imap folders appear as groups by subfolder? E.g.
   if I have INBOX.Bar.Foo -> Bar will be a group.


All in all it wasn't as bad as other said around the internet however
the manual isn't as easy to digest: things are hard to find or out of
date/not relevant to modern usage, this makes the manual harder to
navigate.

Have a great day,

Björn

Re: New to GNUS troubles in figuring how to get rings rolling

[TRS-80]

Björn Bidar via "Announcements and discussions for GNUS, the GNU Emacs
Usenet newsreader (in English)" <info-gnus-english@gnu.org> writes:

> I have been working on having Emails working inside Emacs.
> I've looked into a few solutions which seem to be the most used.
> These were offline mail solutions such as mu4e, those that can fetch
> mail themselves like gnus or wanderlust.

I did research for what seems like years, off and on, before taking the
plunge.  It seemed to me there was a lot of out of date, old info out
there in the Internet about Gnus.

> My current setup is that I have multiple clients that all connect over
> imap.  I want always sync the status of a message back to imap.

If you are using 'nnimap' back end, everything should 'just work'.

> These are mostly imap related.
> 1. How can I take the read status from imap into gnus and vice versa?
> 2. I tried to use ~nnimap-use-namespaces~ however it doesn't work.
>    My mail server supports the extension however the folders aren't
>    split accordingly.

I don't think you should need to do these contortions.  I followed some
basic config guidelines I found and everything 'just worked'.  But I am
by no means an expert, maybe someone else can address this point
specifically.

> 3. Can I make gnus design less archiaric?

You can do whatever you want, it's Emacs after all.  But will it be
worth the effort?

Personally, I try and grok the author's paradigm, before I go changing
things.  I took this approach to Emacs itself, and now Gnus.

Having said that, there were a couple things that even I found so
jarring, I had to modify right away.

> 4. Can I make imap folders appear as groups by subfolder? E.g.
>    if I have INBOX.Bar.Foo -> Bar will be a group.

Again I suggest to perhaps try to 'go with the flow' of what Gnus
provides, rather than fight against it.

Having said that, maybe 'Group Topics' section of manual may provide
what you are looking for?

> All in all it wasn't as bad as other said around the internet however
> the manual isn't as easy to digest: things are hard to find or out of
> date/not relevant to modern usage, this makes the manual harder to
> navigate.

I started keeping a 'cheat sheet' of commonly used keybindings and other
notes and I don't think I could get on without it.  There are simply too
many keybindings and commands.  I am still learning my way around, but
she's a hairy beast, as you say.

I don't think there is anything else out there that gives the power to
handle and organize email and news quite like Gnus though.  Which is why
I keep putting in the effort to learn as much as I can about this
strange, arcane beast.

Cheers,
TRS-80

Re: New to GNUS troubles in figuring how to get rings rolling

[Björn Bidar]

TRS-80 <lists.trs-80@isnotmyreal.name> writes:

I has been some time since I wrote the original message, I think fixed
most stuff by my self thanks :)

>> I have been working on having Emails working inside Emacs.
>> I've looked into a few solutions which seem to be the most used.
>> These were offline mail solutions such as mu4e, those that can fetch
>> mail themselves like gnus or wanderlust.
>
> I did research for what seems like years, off and on, before taking the
> plunge.  It seemed to me there was a lot of out of date, old info out
> there in the Internet about Gnus.

Yeah I noticed that too, the issue with those and I think with upgrading
Gnus in general after not using it for some time is that some items were
deprecated but there isn't a list of deprecated variables in the manual
or some other context like some migration system.


>> My current setup is that I have multiple clients that all connect over
>> imap.  I want always sync the status of a message back to imap.
>
> If you are using 'nnimap' back end, everything should 'just work'.

It does now, the only thing left regarding is imap is that I want to
help to increase the search speed within Gnus from my servers side and
if I can save information such as Gnus metadata in Imap.

>> These are mostly imap related.
>> 1. How can I take the read status from imap into gnus and vice versa?
>> 2. I tried to use ~nnimap-use-namespaces~ however it doesn't work.
>>    My mail server supports the extension however the folders aren't
>>    split accordingly.
>
> I don't think you should need to do these contortions.  I followed some
> basic config guidelines I found and everything 'just worked'.  But I am
> by no means an expert, maybe someone else can address this point
> specifically.

After writing this email I did some digging and found out that indeed it
doesn't work if the inbox namespace doesn't have a prefix set in
Dovecot [1] #58872.
But I think I missunderstood the setting, I think the setting was for
users for IMAP-servers such as Courier-IMAP which have a INBOX. prefix
for the INBOX namespace. [2]


>> 3. Can I make gnus design less archiaric?
>
> You can do whatever you want, it's Emacs after all.  But will it be
> worth the effort?
>
> Personally, I try and grok the author's paradigm, before I go changing
> things.  I took this approach to Emacs itself, and now Gnus.

Yeah I think one has to weigh out how much is worth. Like I made the ui
look a bit better by adding someicons from all the icons.
Just using the format strings isn't as easy, e.g. the layout breaks
quite easier if the message has a topic that is to long, all in all it
doesn't expand as much as it could on a very wide screen (27" 2160p).


> Having said that, there were a couple things that even I found so
> jarring, I had to modify right away.
Like which ones?

>> 4. Can I make imap folders appear as groups by subfolder? E.g.
>>    if I have INBOX.Bar.Foo -> Bar will be a group.
>
> Again I suggest to perhaps try to 'go with the flow' of what Gnus
> provides, rather than fight against it.
>
> Having said that, maybe 'Group Topics' section of manual may provide
> what you are looking for?

That's what I then went for but some kind of automation would have been
useful such as different mail sources going into different topics and
not all groups just being in the Gnus group when you start it at first.
Luckily Davmail uses / as folder separator and my Dovecot does use . as
folder separator.

>> All in all it wasn't as bad as other said around the internet however
>> the manual isn't as easy to digest: things are hard to find or out of
>> date/not relevant to modern usage, this makes the manual harder to
>> navigate.
>
> I started keeping a 'cheat sheet' of commonly used keybindings and other
> notes and I don't think I could get on without it.  There are simply too
> many keybindings and commands.  I am still learning my way around, but
> she's a hairy beast, as you say.
>
> I don't think there is anything else out there that gives the power to
> handle and organize email and news quite like Gnus though.  Which is why
> I keep putting in the effort to learn as much as I can about this
> strange, arcane beast.

That's true however I could do quite much with just Sieve alone. What I
found most annoying is that replies to Emacs posts and Emails from
reported bugs don't contain the appropriate email headers to filter
them.
Like debbugs inserts `X-Gnu-PR-Package` into email that it sends by it
self but if someone replies to you they don't contain those and then go
into into the INBOX rather than Emacs.Bugs.
If there was just a way apply the same sieve rules for replies than for
the original message which was already filtered that would be nice.

The next issue I have that Gnus is for some reason very slow if used
with DavMail. I found people with similar issues but never an
explanation or fix.

If Gnus would fetch articles asynchronous that would be nice.

[1] https://doc.dovecot.org/configuration_manual/namespace/#core_setting-namespace/prefix
[2] https://doc.dovecot.org/configuration_manual/namespace/#backwards-compatibility-courier-imap

Br,

Björn