>>>>> "Charles" == Charles Sebold <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
Charles> Except for calendaring - Emacs + Gnus + BBDB +
Charles> gnus-pers.el to enable one to switch "accounts" easily
Charles> while composing posts/emails. Emacs has calendaring but
Charles> currently can't share meeting info, etc. like Outlook
Charles> can.
GNUS:
Gnus is the current mail reader I use, for similar situation involving
IMAP groups.
An added feature is that Gnus will automatically invoke ssh, so you
can transfer IMAP and/or NNTP stuff over it, in case the remote side
does not support SSL.
However, Gnus seems to perform badly (IMHO) when accessing remote
mail:
- on startup, it tries to check for mail on every folder. This is slow
and time consuming (I only have a shared 28.8kbps Internet
connection...). Especially annoying if I only want to check mail on my
local server.
- if you don't enter your name and password in time, the connection
can time out, leaving Gnus very confused (I think it crashes).
- in fact, Gnus will wait for ever, and you can't tell why: sometimes
it is because ssh is attempting to display a password prompt (for
instance).
- it seems pretty hopeless at caching responses from the server.
- I tried getting off-line support working, but couldn't get it to
work for IMAP (only NNTP). In any case, Mozilla's off-line support is
better, as it will cache articles for off line reading when you are
online.
- yes, Gnus does support SSL, but it doesn't check the remote server
key, hence removing any security gained (how do you know you are
talking to the right host?)
- Gnus doesn't support storing mail (on local computer as opposed to
IMAP) in any shared location. Instead, it will pull all mail out of
the Maildir or mbox file, and insert it into its own private
spool. This makes caching the remote mail with mailsync or isync
impossible (I guess you could setup a local IMAP server, but this
seems really crazy).
However, I really like Gnus because of the way it will display the
folders, etc, in the order I want to see them in. It will also
highlight any responses to mail I send in (a *very* important feature
I have never seen elsewhere).
MOZILLA:
Another program I have tried to is mail with it Mozilla, however, while
it does check for server responses, caching seems to be very good,
only accesses remote servers when you ask, very good SSL support, etc,
last I tried it, it was very unreliable, and often refused to show me
certain IMAP groups (I got errors: remote server has closed
connection).
It also doesn't highlight responses to outgoing mail I send (how on
earth do you not miss replies or mailing lists like this one without
something like that?)
Also of importance, was that I have a user.debian folder, for
receiving Debian mail. With Gnus it is easy to tell it: send all
replies using "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" as the From: address.
With Mozilla though, you have to configure it separately for each IMAP
server. You can modify the From address from a pull down list, but I
couldn't work out how to add "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" without also adding a
IMAP server.
Charles> But you seem very wedded to the _way_ Outlook does
Charles> things; I can almost guarantee that the fact that Gnus
Charles> can do all this, doesn't mean that you'll like it.
Charles> Extensive customization is possible and easy but one must
Charles> learn a little Lisp to do it.
The main limitations of Gnus for me, I guess are: won't check SSL
server key, and won't cache IMAP data (unless you manually tell it to,
but then it won't delete the messages when they are erased from the
server).
--
Brian May <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
