gnus and pine

gnus and pine

[harven]

Dear all,

I recently switched from Pine to Gnus as a mail reader.
I wrote a quick tutorial on the emacs wiki to make Gnus behave
a little more like Pine :
http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs-en/GnusAndPine
Any comments are welcome. 

BTW there is still a feature present in many mailers that
I was not able to recreate with Gnus. When both the Summary
and Article buffers are displayed, is it possible to update
the Summary buffer when new mail is received, without 
modifying the content of the Article Buffer ?

Re: gnus and pine

[Xavier Maillard]

harven <harven@free.fr> writes:

> I recently switched from Pine to Gnus as a mail reader.
> I wrote a quick tutorial on the emacs wiki to make Gnus behave
> a little more like Pine :
> http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs-en/GnusAndPine
> Any comments are welcome. 

I am wondering why you made the switch. Also could you describe
Pine onto your emacwiki page and what differs with Gnus (AFYK).

Xavier

Re: gnus and pine

[harven]

Xavier Maillard <xma@gnu.org> writes:

> harven <harven@free.fr> writes:
>
>> I recently switched from Pine to Gnus as a mail reader.
>> I wrote a quick tutorial on the emacs wiki to make Gnus behave
>> a little more like Pine :
>> http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs-en/GnusAndPine
>> Any comments are welcome. 
>
> I am wondering why you made the switch. 

I have used Pine for some years now, and it was nice, albeit for the
fact that Pine has a built-in editor which is pretty limited when it
comes to localisation, formatting, completion and else. So I began to
use emacs as an external editor. After a while, it felt a bit strange
to spawn big emacs from little pine, when often there was already some
emacs instance hanging around. So I started looking for another way to
check my mail. Gnus is pine-compatible, that is, it can read and write
in the pine mailbox, and it is provided with emacs, so I gave it a try.

> Also could you describe
> Pine onto your emacwiki page and what differs with Gnus (AFYK).
>
> Xavier

The emacs wiki is not the best place to talk about pine. See the pine
(or alpine) webpage for more information about it. In short, Pine is a
unix text-only keyboard-driven mail client, that runs from the command
line, and is targeted at inexperienced users. This may appear a bit
contradictory at first, but really you can set it up and be proficient
with it in less than a minute. Have a try. In some sense, the opposite
of Gnus.

     Pine                       Gnus
     fast                       extensible
     ease-of-use                hard to configure
     primarily a mail reader    primarily a news reader
     C                          Lisp
     from the terminal          from within emacs
     a single mailbox format    seven mailbox formats
     help onscreen              500+ pages manual
     4 millions users           dedicated fan base (?)
     for the mass               for the elisp expert

There is nothing fancy with the code I wrote on the wiki. Main points
* one letter shortcuts for common task in the summary buffer, same as pine
  s save  d delete  f forward  r reply ... 
* a few different marks.  D deleted  X expunge
* expiry 0
* a better "search in articles" command
* highlighting of the current line in the summary buffer
* confirmation when sending email, check for forgotten attachments
It has probably no interest for a seasoned Gnus user. But it may help
a Pine user which wants a better integration with emacs.

Re: gnus and pine

[Frédéric Perrin]

Le Jeudi 18 à 22:55, harven a écrit :
> Xavier Maillard <xma@gnu.org> writes:
>> harven <harven@free.fr> writes:
>>> I recently switched from Pine to Gnus as a mail reader.
>>> I wrote a quick tutorial on the emacs wiki to make Gnus behave a
>>> little more like Pine :
>>> http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs-en/GnusAndPine
>>
>> I am wondering why you made the switch. 
>
> I have used Pine for some years now, and it was nice, albeit for the
> fact that Pine has a built-in editor which is pretty limited when it
> comes to localisation, formatting, completion and else. So I began to
> use emacs as an external editor. After a while, it felt a bit strange
> to spawn big emacs from little pine, when often there was already some
> emacs instance hanging around. So I started looking for another way to
> check my mail. Gnus is pine-compatible, that is, it can read and write
> in the pine mailbox, and it is provided with emacs, so I gave it a
> try.

I guess the question was « why do you use $foo when you want $bar's
behaviour ? ». Also, have you looked at emacsclient ? It enables you to
reuse a existing emacs, spawning it in a new buffer.

-- 
Fred

Re: gnus and pine

[harven]

Frédéric Perrin <frederic.perrin@resel.fr> writes:

> Le Jeudi 18 à 22:55, harven a écrit :
>> Xavier Maillard <xma@gnu.org> writes:
>>> harven <harven@free.fr> writes:
>>>> I recently switched from Pine to Gnus as a mail reader.
>>>> I wrote a quick tutorial on the emacs wiki to make Gnus behave a
>>>> little more like Pine :
>>>> http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs-en/GnusAndPine
>>>
>>> I am wondering why you made the switch. 
>>
>> I have used Pine for some years now, and it was nice, albeit for the
>> fact that Pine has a built-in editor which is pretty limited when it
>> comes to localisation, formatting, completion and else. So I began to
>> use emacs as an external editor. After a while, it felt a bit strange
>> to spawn big emacs from little pine, when often there was already some
>> emacs instance hanging around. So I started looking for another way to
>> check my mail. Gnus is pine-compatible, that is, it can read and write
>> in the pine mailbox, and it is provided with emacs, so I gave it a
>> try.
>
> I guess the question was « why do you use $foo when you want $bar's
> behaviour ? ». Also, have you looked at emacsclient ? It enables you to
> reuse a existing emacs, spawning it in a new buffer.

Then I guess the answer is « I decided to use $foo instead of $bar + $foo
because $foo can do whatever $bar can do, after some customization »

Re: gnus and pine

[Xavier Maillard]

harven <harven@free.fr> writes:

> Then I guess the answer is « I decided to use $foo instead of $bar + $foo
> because $foo can do whatever $bar can do, after some customization »

:)

Whatever the reason was, it is a good reason.

I am a bit surprised about the "4 millions users" for the pine
MUA. What is your source ?

Re: gnus and pine

[David Kastrup]

Xavier Maillard <xma@gnu.org> writes:

> harven <harven@free.fr> writes:
>
>> Then I guess the answer is « I decided to use $foo instead of $bar + $foo
>> because $foo can do whatever $bar can do, after some customization »
>
> :)
>
> Whatever the reason was, it is a good reason.
>
> I am a bit surprised about the "4 millions users" for the pine
> MUA. What is your source ?

Arithmetic overflow?

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum

Re: gnus and pine

[harven]

David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org> writes:

> Xavier Maillard <xma@gnu.org> writes:
>
>> harven <harven@free.fr> writes:
>>
>>> Then I guess the answer is « I decided to use $foo instead of $bar + $foo
>>> because $foo can do whatever $bar can do, after some customization »
>>
>> :)
>>
>> Whatever the reason was, it is a good reason.
>>
>> I am a bit surprised about the "4 millions users" for the pine
>> MUA. What is your source ?
>
> Arithmetic overflow?

Arithmetic underflow. 
The pine website reports 29 millions users, as of august 2006.
When first starting pine, a new user is prompted whether he wants
to send a message to the pine website. That's how the data are gathered.
See for details http://staff.washington.edu/corey/pine-stats/
I would be interested to know if there are statistics about the gnus userbase.

Re: gnus and pine

[Xavier Maillard]

harven <harven@free.fr> writes:

> David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org> writes:
>
>> Xavier Maillard <xma@gnu.org> writes:
>>
>>> harven <harven@free.fr> writes:
>>>
>>>> Then I guess the answer is « I decided to use $foo instead of $bar + $foo
>>>> because $foo can do whatever $bar can do, after some customization »
>>>
>>> :)
>>>
>>> Whatever the reason was, it is a good reason.
>>>
>>> I am a bit surprised about the "4 millions users" for the pine
>>> MUA. What is your source ?
>>
>> Arithmetic overflow?
>
> Arithmetic underflow. 
> The pine website reports 29 millions users, as of august 2006.
> When first starting pine, a new user is prompted whether he wants
> to send a message to the pine website. That's how the data are gathered.
> See for details http://staff.washington.edu/corey/pine-stats/

This is really astonishing. I do not pretend that these numbers
are wrong or something like that but except Linus, I never met
somebody using Pine (well you are the second in fact).

> I would be interested to know if there are statistics about the gnus userbase.

Gnus is popular but I am pretty comfident there are not that much
users.

Re: gnus and pine

[Sivaram Neelakantan]

Xavier Maillard <xma@gnu.org> writes:


[...]

>> I would be interested to know if there are statistics about the
>> gnus userbase.
>
> Gnus is popular but I am pretty comfident there are not that much
> users.

You can say that again.  In the organisation where I work, so far
apart from me, none.  And all I get questions on

a) hey, what's that pic (gnus splash screen)
b) why are you working on MSDOS screens (I have a white on black
screen setup for Emacs)

Methinks, Gnus followers must be in the low thousands which itself
might be optimistic? :-)


 sivaram
 -- 

Re: gnus and pine

[Xavier Maillard]

Sivaram Neelakantan <nsivaram.net@gmail.com> writes:

> Xavier Maillard <xma@gnu.org> writes:
>
>
> [...]
>
>>> I would be interested to know if there are statistics about the
>>> gnus userbase.
>>
>> Gnus is popular but I am pretty comfident there are not that much
>> users.
>
> You can say that again.  In the organisation where I work, so far
> apart from me, none.  And all I get questions on

I guess, we, Gnus users, are always getting laugh at when
launching any emacs tool. Just getting used to that personally.
Now I even laugh at me with them (ironically). I would not change
my emacs for any other GUIsh tool, I like my emacs :)

Re: gnus and pine

[Richard Riley]

Xavier Maillard <xma@gnu.org> writes:

> harven <harven@free.fr> writes:
>
>> David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org> writes:
>>
>>> Xavier Maillard <xma@gnu.org> writes:
>>>
>>>> harven <harven@free.fr> writes:
>>>>
>>>>> Then I guess the answer is « I decided to use $foo instead of $bar + $foo
>>>>> because $foo can do whatever $bar can do, after some customization »
>>>>
>>>> :)
>>>>
>>>> Whatever the reason was, it is a good reason.
>>>>
>>>> I am a bit surprised about the "4 millions users" for the pine
>>>> MUA. What is your source ?
>>>
>>> Arithmetic overflow?
>>
>> Arithmetic underflow. 
>> The pine website reports 29 millions users, as of august 2006.
>> When first starting pine, a new user is prompted whether he wants
>> to send a message to the pine website. That's how the data are gathered.
>> See for details http://staff.washington.edu/corey/pine-stats/
>
> This is really astonishing. I do not pretend that these numbers
> are wrong or something like that but except Linus, I never met
> somebody using Pine (well you are the second in fact).

Ditto.

My Gnus displays the mail/news client used to post and unless people are
disguising their client, it's very rare I see Pine in use.

The numbers must be wrong....

>
>> I would be interested to know if there are statistics about the gnus userbase.
>
> Gnus is popular but I am pretty comfident there are not that much
> users.

A few tens of thousands? And possibly diminishing as emacs loses share
with the plethora of alternatives available unfortunately.

Re: gnus and pine

[Reiner Steib]

On Mon, Dec 22 2008, Sivaram Neelakantan wrote:

> Xavier Maillard <xma@gnu.org> writes:
> [...]
>>> I would be interested to know if there are statistics about the
>>> gnus userbase.
>>
>> Gnus is popular but I am pretty comfident there are not that much
>> users.
[...]
> b) why are you working on MSDOS screens (I have a white on black
> screen setup for Emacs)

I'd guess pine users would get the same question.

> Methinks, Gnus followers must be in the low thousands which itself
> might be optimistic? :-)

Here are some data points:

(1) Debian popularity contest statistics for alpine,gnus:

    <http://qa.debian.org/popcon-graph.php?packages=alpine%2Cgnus&show_vote=on&from_date=2007-01-01>

    Shows that pine (alpine) has approximately 3 times more users than
    (al)pine.

    Problem: You don't no need to use the separate Debian package
    "gnus" because Gnus is also part of the Emacs packages (emacsNN*),
    AFAICS.

(2) Gmane Posting user agents statistics (mailing lists to news
    gateway)

    <http://gmane.org/user-agents.php>

    Display comparable numbers of users for pine (3.2%) and Gnus
    (2.2%).

    Problems: Quite outdated.  Dunno if only posting thru Gmane is
    counted (i.e. users sending messages via NNTP) or if the stats
    also count mails received from the mailing lists.

(3) Posting statistics for de.* (usenet)

    This is a statistic on the number of post, not about the number of
    users for German language newsgroups.

    <news:stats-reader-11.2008@news.arcor.de>
    http://www.google.com/groups?as_umsgid=stats-reader-11.2008@news.arcor.de

    (Translated ...)
    Posting statistic for de.* 11.2008
    User-Agent|X-Newsreader|X-Mailer TOP100:
    Percent Number  Type
    ---------------------------------------------------------
    19.55    30366  Thunderbird
    11.08    17204  Microsoft Outlook Express
     9.77    15168  Mozilla
     9.09    14112  Forte Agent
     8.15    12657  40tude_Dialog
     7.25    11257  <unsigned>
     7.23    11237  G2/1.0
     3.41     5289  KNode
     2.94     4562  aktienboard forums
     2.36     3661  tin
     2.29     3554  MacSOUP
     2.26     3511  slrn
     2.00     3103  Xnews
     1.68     2605  Gnus
     0.93     1441  Forte Free Agent
     0.77     1203  Pan
     0.73     1128  Microsoft Windows Mail 6.0.6001.18000
     0.70     1091  MicroPlanet-Gravity/2.70.2067
     0.65     1016  OpenXP
     0.64     1000  Hamster
     0.48      749  Newsoffice.de - based on NewsPortal
     0.48      748  Opera
     0.45      703  Sylpheed
     0.33      512  FreeXP (CrossPoint)
     0.31      482  ProNews
     0.27      423  bleachbot
     0.26      397  MT-NewsWatcher
     0.26      397  Microsoft Windows Live Mail 12.0.1606
     0.19      302  trn
          [...]  
     0.02       36  Alpine 1.10 (LNX 962 2008-03-14)

Bye, Reiner.
-- 
       ,,,
      (o o)
---ooO-(_)-Ooo---  |  PGP key available  |  http://rsteib.home.pages.de/

Re: gnus and pine

[Xavier Maillard]

Richard Riley <rileyrgdev@gmail.com> writes:

>>> I would be interested to know if there are statistics about the gnus userbase.
>>
>> Gnus is popular but I am pretty comfident there are not that much
>> users.
>
> A few tens of thousands? And possibly diminishing as emacs loses share
> with the plethora of alternatives available unfortunately.

Do you mean people leaving Emacs for a "modern" alternative or
people choosing an alternative without even knowing emacs exists
? That's not the same: we can't loose something we never had ;)

Re: gnus and pine

[Richard Riley]

Xavier Maillard <xma@gnu.org> writes:

> Richard Riley <rileyrgdev@gmail.com> writes:
>
>>>> I would be interested to know if there are statistics about the gnus userbase.
>>>
>>> Gnus is popular but I am pretty comfident there are not that much
>>> users.
>>
>> A few tens of thousands? And possibly diminishing as emacs loses share
>> with the plethora of alternatives available unfortunately.
>
> Do you mean people leaving Emacs for a "modern" alternative or
> people choosing an alternative without even knowing emacs exists
> ? That's not the same: we can't loose something we never had ;)

I think the more alternatives then the less chance of them even
attempting to use Emacs which we, being the elite ....., know to be
superior to all those alternatives :-;

So we do indeed lose new adopters as a result of alternatives.

(And I do care about Emacs maintaining a large user base since that
guarantees continued support and expansion)

I also know of people leaving emacs because its way behind in the IDE
sense - Eclipse (for example) is much "better" (*) for project
management, debugging, development for many people since it works out of
the box.

People need to share their setups and get the word out!

http://richardriley.net/default/projects/emacs/dotprogramming

(*) Better here being "ready to run" and meeting a core common need in
addition to being infinitely customisable though Java. Things like "just
working" context help, refactoring, debugging, rebuilding etc are there
and ready. Compare that to emacs and the need to add compile commands,
add hooks for devhelp, man pages etc and its quite obvious what is the
easiest to set up even if it is not, ultimately, the most powerful
solution.

-- 
 important and urgent problems of the technology of today are no longer the satisfactions of the primary needs or of archetypal wishes, but the reparation of the evils and damages by the technology of yesterday.  ~Dennis Gabor, Innovations:  Scientific, Technological and Social, 1970

Re: gnus and pine

[harven]

Richard Riley <rileyrgdev@gmail.com> writes:

>
> My Gnus displays the mail/news client used to post and unless people are
> disguising their client, it's very rare I see Pine in use.
>
> The numbers must be wrong....

Pine is a mail client, not a newsreader. It has some capability
as a newsreader, as a side effect, but that's not its primary goal. In
fact, there are probably few Pine users that know they can read
news with Pine. The fact is not even mentioned on the alpine webpage
http://www.washington.edu/alpine/

Re: gnus and pine

[Richard Riley]

harven <harven@free.fr> writes:

> Richard Riley <rileyrgdev@gmail.com> writes:
>
>>
>> My Gnus displays the mail/news client used to post and unless people are
>> disguising their client, it's very rare I see Pine in use.
>>
>> The numbers must be wrong....
>
> Pine is a mail client, not a newsreader. It has some capability
> as a newsreader, as a side effect, but that's not its primary goal. In

I know - but like Gnus it CAN read both.

My display of client is for both mail and news.

> fact, there are probably few Pine users that know they can read
> news with Pine. The fact is not even mentioned on the alpine webpage
> http://www.washington.edu/alpine/

Which reduces even further the chance of that many millions of users....

-- 
 important and urgent problems of the technology of today are no longer the satisfactions of the primary needs or of archetypal wishes, but the reparation of the evils and damages by the technology of yesterday.  ~Dennis Gabor, Innovations:  Scientific, Technological and Social, 1970

Re: gnus and pine

[harven]

Richard Riley <rileyrgdev@gmail.com> writes:

> harven <harven@free.fr> writes:
>
>> Richard Riley <rileyrgdev@gmail.com> writes:
>>
>>>
>>> My Gnus displays the mail/news client used to post and unless people are
>>> disguising their client, it's very rare I see Pine in use.
>>>
>>> The numbers must be wrong....
>>
>> Pine is a mail client, not a newsreader. It has some capability
>> as a newsreader, as a side effect, but that's not its primary goal. In
>
> I know - but like Gnus it CAN read both.
>
> My display of client is for both mail and news.
>
>> fact, there are probably few Pine users that know they can read
>> news with Pine. The fact is not even mentioned on the alpine webpage
>> http://www.washington.edu/alpine/
>
> Which reduces even further the chance of that many millions of users....

Don't be jealous. I will agree though that there was probably some migration
from pine to thunderbird in 2007. Thunderbird is however pretty much 
difficult to emulate with gnus, since it is mouse-driven.

Re: gnus and pine

[Joe Fineman]

Xavier Maillard <xma@gnu.org> writes:

> This is really astonishing. I do not pretend that these numbers are
> wrong or something like that but except Linus, I never met somebody
> using Pine (well you are the second in fact).

I used to use Pine (at The World) before I switched to Gnus.
-- 
---  Joe Fineman    joe_f@verizon.net

||:  In the long run we're all dead.  :||