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The question is: Can a software that doesn't even know what's Viagra spam all the time claim to take over sorting important mail for you?

As it turns out, yes. I was using this a decade ago in Gnus.

Darl McBride [uncyclopedia.org] and Steve Ballmer* [uncyclopedia.org] have the same motto:

"No gnus is good gnus".

It sure has! Though only a client, not an actual message board server. Which shouldn't be too difficult to implement, of course, if one were inclined.

If it has API it will rock as a secondary input system to mouse. You will be able to scroll through text/code just by looking, switch windows, copy paste - it has an enormous potential.

An enormous potential FOR EVIL, that is. The Escape Meta Alt Control Shift people are bad enough already. They'll go crazy with this, and I don't mean good-crazy-like-that-hot-barista-with-all-those-tattoos crazy. Running the compiler's going to be "control meta think_about_puppies think_about_hot_wings C" by the time they're done with it.

A number of prominent EMACS users already have permanent wrist damage from all those modifier keys. If they release an API for this thing, there'll be a whole new generation of people with repetitive mind stress injuries.

You heard it hear first.

I imagine that this is meant for people who, back in the day, learnt Pine because there were no other choices available on their university computers and will just keep going with that because of inertia. People who want to change to a powerful e-mail client that doesn't require a GUI now would probably do better with something that can be used in Emacs, because then you get not only CLI-reachable e-mail but all the other powerful tools Emacs provides. I would therefore recommend O'Reilly's Learning GNU Emacs to get started with Emacs in general, and then the Gnus reader for e-mail and news.

(Any post recommending Emacs will probably be challenged by a call to use Vi, but does Vi have e-mail clients? I'm really curious to know.)

I've been doing that in the mail reader I use for oh, only about a decade now.

See http://www.gnus.org/

When I saw this yesterday, I actually experienced a few seconds of excitement that there might someday be a good X11 mail client.

Grab emacs 22; it includes a copy of gnus, an mail/news/RSS reader. Instructions on setting up email can be found in the info page (in emacs, C-h i m gnus m getting mail) or in the online documentation.

GNU emacs runs in a console, but it also runs in X11. It is capable of displaying inline images, of coloured/styled/font-ed text and of providing menus and toolbars if those float your boat. It's the best text editor out there, the best IDE and the best mail reader.

When I saw this yesterday, I actually experienced a few seconds of excitement that there might someday be a good X11 mail client.

Grab emacs 22; it includes a copy of gnus, an mail/news/RSS reader. Instructions on setting up email can be found in the info page (in emacs, C-h i m gnus m getting mail) or in the online documentation.

GNU emacs runs in a console, but it also runs in X11. It is capable of displaying inline images, of coloured/styled/font-ed text and of providing menus and toolbars if those float your boat. It's the best text editor out there, the best IDE and the best mail reader.

A good idea. And while we're at it, let's dump those silly Ctrl and Alt keys. Who uses them? F1 - F12 can certainly be abandoned, as well as that triumvirate of uselessness, Print Screen / Scroll Lock / Pause. Don't get me started on Microsoft's "Windows" and "Menu" keys (or Apple's "Apple" key). "Insert" has outlived its usefulness, and Page Up/Down were obsoleted by scroll-wheels. That leaves "Home" and "End," which I could live without. "Delete" is kind of redundant if you have "Backspace." "Tab" never works the way you want it to. "Escape" is a false hope. And number keypads are an obvious waste of space. What does that leave us with? This.

I'm not being entirely facetious here. Most of the keys on a modern computer keyboard are relics of some older technology, be it a typewriter (tab, caps lock) or a text terminal (scroll lock). They increase the likelihood of typing mistakes and make computers look more intimidating than they need to.

Of course, there will always be some user screaming if you remove his favorite key, so it's easier to keep the legacy keys than remove them. And for power users, mouse-driven interfaces still can't match the speed of Escape Meta Alt Control Shift. This will have to change, and I think it will with large, multiple-contact, flexible touch screens. Keyboards will stick around for a long time, because there's nothing better for getting a lot of text down fast, and the tactile response is important. But they will be more "peripheral," stripped down to their essential function and used only occasionally.

Is it Notes or Emacs that's the ugly email client?

Well, it's certainly not Emacs... nothing wrong with Gnus.

PINE blows. If you're going to use a client, use useful one.

Try Emacs (http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/emacs.html), it supports both reading mail (http://my.gnus.org/), reading news (also http://my.gnus.org/) and surfing internet(http://www.gnu.org/software/w3/).
(And you could even edit your files with it :-)

Try Emacs (http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/emacs.html), it supports both reading mail (http://my.gnus.org/), reading news (also http://my.gnus.org/) and surfing internet(http://www.gnu.org/software/w3/).
(And you could even edit your files with it :-)

It's a shame, that for 5 years I've been reading Slashdot, it is actually first time I see Gnus being mentioned in email-related discussion. Those kids with their posh buttony mail clients, Thunderbird, bah!

I use both vi and emacs, too. I use each one for the thing it's best at - emacs as the operating system in which Gnus runs, and vi for editing text.

If you want to see something really different try Gnus. I'm using it for years now and yet to see more flexible, powerful and ergonomic mail/news client. The learning curve is steep, though.

Well, actually you do...

My big problem with KDE (now that the qt licensing issues have been resolved) is that it uses C++ rather than C.

I keep on thinking that it would be nice to write a Slashdot->news program, but I've never found time to do it.

I think someone beat you to it It might even be on your HD already; it's part of Gnus which is in GNU Emacs by default.

Have fun. :-)

I've been using Gmail and I find it incredibly useful. My favs:
1. The keyboard shortcuts: allows me to use web based email the way I use Pine.. do everything without touching the mouse even once.

2. The tracking of emails to display them as "conversations".. so neat, it looks almost obvious.

3. The much griped about text ads are totally unobtrusive, and (faint, faint) they do not even appear on all email pages. Google probably has some algorithm to decide which conversations can get targeted ads.

4. The address autocomplete - no more clicking on email addresses in a popup window to insert them. It works exactly like a proper client application (as different from a browser app)

5. To reply to an email, all I have to do is click in a textbox below the email and presto! the compose widgets are there.. great time saver.. and you can see the conversation on top.

6. The interface is so clean and clutter free - it has google written all over it!

Check out gmane. Only way to deal with high-volume mailing lists.

I recently tried to use other mail/news clients that don't make people look funny at you, but quite frankly, they all sucked in comparison, and I switched back. Even without the fancy configuration options, I could not find one that was as usable for reading a lot of mailing lists and newsgroups. I could not find one where I can easily sort mailing lists and newsgroups from various servers into subfolders by topic, or where I can set up the default spellchecking language per group, or easily create scoring rules globally or per topic/group, let alone fix up the mess people create with Outlook Express so that I can actually read them without getting a headache. Actually, it is hard to find programms that let you treat mailing lists and newsgroups and other similar things (like slashdot, which Gnus supports) in the same way - as if I would care about the transport method used! Some programms have some of the features I want, but not one of them had them all.

This thing is really the prototypical Emacs-based application, ugly, hard to learn, but amazingly powerful, flexible and easy to use. Not to mention the huge community of hackers that will implement all features found in other mailers in a small elisp snippet anyway :-)

And that's about the only reason to use Gnus for mail, other than the fact that you don't have to leave Emacs. Try to browse through the Gnus Manual and see how many different configuration choices you have. I prefer Netscape Messenger for reading mail and news, but that's just because I only need the basic features.

GNUS, the threaded internet newsreader for (x)emacs, has been doing this for years. Its usenet ancestry shows in its mail functionalities, and it makes for very convenient reading of mailing-lists.

It's nice, but nothing matches Gnus for versatility - nothing. Name one other email/news reader that supports PGP and PGP/MIME (both correctly), detailed per-folder configuration, automatic scoring (it analyzes your reading habits to highlight posts it thinks you may find interesting), pretty much any email server type in existence, runs almost everywhere (if it's got Emacs, then it has Gnus), and is user-extensible in a built-in AI language.

I've been using it for years. I keep trying Evolution, Kmail, Thunderbird, etc. but I've yet to find anything remotely as powerful.

Emacs Gnus

i would normally say "next!" here but there are sensitive souls out there (w/ whom i can identify completely) for whom re-inventing email clients is a touchy subject, ready to rail on and on about their latest 5MB grep-child. so i add this blurb around the "next!" to cushion the message somewhat. (also, slashdot bean-counting requires this verbosity, blech.)

Gnus has been handling threads in email for about a decade now, I believe. Part of the advantage of reading email as though 'twere news. Mutt attempts to thread emails; I'm not certain how successful it is, as it's been years since I've used that excellent mail reader.

What we really need is for someone to code up JWZ's Intertwingle, which would make life truly great. Not to mention that it'd be a perfect job for elisp, which means it'd be perfect for emacs, which means it'd be perfect for gnus, which means that it'd be perfect.

It might be very nice, but it's hardly innovative (unless you're comparing it to the miserable Mozilla mailer) -- all of those features have been available for years in Gnus, a mail client good enough to learn Emacs for.

'jfb

In fact, I doubt there is much you cannot do with Gnus, it's amazing. Be sure to check out http://my.gnus.org for lots of cool stuff.

In fact, I doubt there is much you cannot do with Gnus, it's amazing. Be sure to check out http://my.gnus.org for lots of cool stuff.

In fact, I doubt there is much you cannot do with Gnus, it's amazing. Be sure to check out http://my.gnus.org for lots of cool stuff.

You aren't the only person thinking along these lines. It seems that the ideas that are found in /. moderation are a recurring theme. Emacs Gnus had an interface to something called GroupLens some time ago, but it is dead now according to the manual.

What can you try when the available instructive information
around the varied web links haven't worked when
you're trying to set up gnus mail ?...

There's Robin Socha's gnus dotfile generator at
http://my.gnus.org/GDG/
GDG is something in the right direction but it didn't work !
Something more automatic is needed.

Mail in gnus would be the best way to get through messages!

This is nice, but what I'd really like to see is a combination of Freedb and the eyesore database, only for any album. I'd like to see, for example, who the drummer was on the song I'm listening to, and what other stuff s/he's done.

gnus has been doing this for years... as well as other neat things like mail scoring (similar to news scoring) so that mail you don't want to read gets filtered to the bottom of your list or (if you tell it to) doesn't even show up at all. Similarly, mail that you most want to read (based on past response) gets bubbled up to the top. gnus also supports mail expiry (once again, similar to news) so that old mail gets Handled(TM).

Welcome to Gnus. Have a sandwich.

(jfb)

The linux-kernel mailing list is available via nntp at fa.linux.kernel. If you have a news reader that does scoring (e.g. gnus it makes the traffic all that much more manageable.


dan.

gnus allows you to filter posts with a manually controlled (but complex) scoring system, or you can turn on a mode which just watches what you tend to read and ignore, and attempts to filter posts you're not likely to enjoy based on who posted it and "artificial stupidity" performed on keywords in the subject lines.

gnus supports color highlighting of different reply levels within a post, useful for tracking the fragments of a discussion by the time a post is 8 replies into a thread.

You can access it remotely with only a text interface (even in color with xemacs or emacs21), or you can access it locally and have a nice graphical interface. If you're on the road, there's no worry about resetting all your read markers as you go to and from.

gnus is written in elisp, which makes it easy to add features you may want. And there are mailing lists and a newsgroup full of fanatics who love making changes if you've got an interesting idea, but don't have the aptitude to implement it.

And of course, like most emacs components, you can customize the hell out of gnus. If there's anything you don't like, chances are someone's already made a configuration option to change its behavior.

My thoughts exactly. In fact, one of the most powerful features is adaptive scoring. This mechanism keeps track of what articles you actually read and then will score those threads higher the next time you go to the group. Very nice.

Add to the fact that it's totally programmable and it's hard to beat. You really leverage it when you use it to read your email too.

Just for reference, you can get it at: gnus.org. It's also a standard part of (X)Emacs, so you should already have it. Just M-x gnus.

boojit writes:

> Also, wouldn't it be nice if there was an open electronic format
> that retained things like the liner pages, etc, from the CD? Maybe
> I'm the only one who cares about such esoteric issues, but to me,
> the concept of the "album" itself is important and needs to be
> retained.

Yeah. Most of the mp3-based players I've seen have been very
song-centric, which is rather useless for people like myself who like
albums. I also like Emacs, so I (naturally) wrote an Emacs-based mp3
jukebox to serenade me.
http://quimby.gnus.org/jukebox/jukebox.html has an overview.

Your mileage *will* vary.

--
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
larsi@gnus.org * Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen

Uhum, that would be b-DEL if you use a good mail program

GNUS makes slashdot look like nntp :)

(Score:-1,Offtopic)

http://www.gnus.org/manual/gnus_173.html#SEC172

The key difference is that Gnus will display the code for the script and ask the user: "do you want to execute this script?". You don't see any Gnus mail virii, do you?

--

Yeah it sucks. More people should use software like mutt. It makes dealing with pgp-signed/encrypted messages so easy. (I hear gnus is really good too, but mutt was much easier for me to learn)

I think the best thing to do is just sign (not encrypt) all your email to your non-crypto using friends. That way they can still read your email, but they'll have to use a pgp aware mua to verify your sig. Hopefully, your friend will eventually be encouraged to use decent software to get this function. Then you're 99% of the way there and you can start exchanging encrypted emails.

Point being: Sign everything!

I didn't write they should act differently :)
Microsoft Excel doesn't still have the Lotus 1-2-3 menu compatibility mode because it's fun to have it.

The point is, sometimes Microsoft _is_ making the de-facto standards for interfaces, as ugly as they may be. It's not criminal to follow them, it depends on what developers think to be most important: providing better functionality (gnus is the prime example) or better helping users cross over (evolution). I'm just saying that sometimes, somewhere, Microsoft is leading the pack, and it doesn't matter why it is so.

Gnus has this ability. I haven't actually tried it, but there is a smime module that explicitly lists X.509. Not sure what version it started coming with but the latest version has it.

Is there any way to better filter the slashdot comments? Maybe something could be done using Mozilla's new Formzilla?

Well, if you're using Emacs, (and who isn't ?), then you can use the Mail/News reader GNUS, to view slashdot comments as if they were a newsgroup.

Doing this is so cool, because you can take advantage of both the slashdot scoring system, and GNUS filtering/kill filing.

See here for instructions on setting up GNUS.

Is there any way to better filter the slashdot comments? Maybe something could be done using Mozilla's new Formzilla?

Well, if you're using Emacs, (and who isn't ?), then you can use the Mail/News reader GNUS, to view slashdot comments as if they were a newsgroup.

Doing this is so cool, because you can take advantage of both the slashdot scoring system, and GNUS filtering/kill filing.

See here for instructions on setting up GNUS.

Some of us have used emailers-cum-news clients where we can write this sort of thing in lisp and hook it into the send routine if we want. I think the fact that Gnus doesn't do this says a lot for what the geekier ones amongst us don't need in a mailer, myself.

Alternative thought: "I can't use the word fuck? FUCK THAT!" and expletives would probably increase as a direct result ;)
~Tim
--
.|` Clouds cross the black moonlight,

Gnus lets you do this for Slashdot...