[OFF TOPIC] almost giving up on emacs email..looking for advice?

[OFF TOPIC] almost giving up on emacs email..looking for advice?

[Xebar Saram]

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Hi list

I know this is a bit off topic but im desperately looking for some advice
regarding email through emacs.

i have tried a bunch of them over the last month (gnus, mu4e, wanderlust,
rmail,mew and maybe other i forget).
I had various levels of success with each one to setup (it was never easy)
but i ended up sorta settling on mu4e. the problem is that mu4e never
managed to work properly for me (headers were not updating when new mail
arrived, reply was broken etc) so i had to give up

What i want is basically pretty simple. an easy to setup email for emacs,
but one that would work tightly with gmail since i do a lot of mail
checking on the road via my cellphone.

any advise. recommendations or setups that maybe people are willing to
share?

thx so much in advance

Z

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Re: [OFF TOPIC] almost giving up on emacs email..looking for advice?

[Peter Davis]

Xebar Saram <zeltakc@gmail.com> writes:

> Hi list
>
> I know this is a bit off topic but im desperately looking for some
> advice regarding email through emacs.
>
> i have tried a bunch of them over the last month (gnus, mu4e,
> wanderlust, rmail,mew and maybe other i forget). 
> I had various levels of success with each one to setup (it was never
> easy) but i ended up sorta settling on mu4e. the problem is that mu4e
> never managed to work properly for me (headers were not updating when
> new mail arrived, reply was broken etc) so i had to give up
>
> What i want is basically pretty simple. an easy to setup email for
> emacs, but one that would work tightly with gmail since i do a lot of
> mail checking on the road via my cellphone.
>
> any advise. recommendations or setups that maybe people are willing to
> share?

I don't know about mu4e, but there are lots of sites that discuss setting up gnus to work with GMail, including example files,
etc. Just Google "gnus gmail" and you'll find many results.

I'm using gnus with Fastmail.fm. It was difficult to set up initially, but once I got it working, it's been easy to maintain,
move to new machines, etc. Also, I like the fact that I can keep finding new features and customizations to add.

-pd

Re: [OFF TOPIC] almost giving up on emacs email..looking for advice?

[Eric S Fraga]

On Thursday,  6 Aug 2015 at 15:43, Xebar Saram wrote:
> Hi list
>
> I know this is a bit off topic but im desperately looking for some advice
> regarding email through emacs.
>
> i have tried a bunch of them over the last month (gnus, mu4e, wanderlust,
> rmail,mew and maybe other i forget).

I use gnus and have done so almost exclusively for a long time
now.  almost exclusively because I do read email on my phone now and
again.  gnus, like org, can do almost anything but does have a steep
learning curve for some aspects.  gnus works just fine with
gmail.  configuring for gmail is quite easy these days:

    http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/GnusGmail

Maybe if you indicate what didn't work, we can try to help although you
might get better response on the gnus mailing list:

    http://gnus.org/resources.html

-- 
: Eric S Fraga (0xFFFCF67D), Emacs 25.0.50.2, Org release_8.3beta-1315-ga3b2b7

Re: [OFF TOPIC] almost giving up on emacs email..looking for advice?

[John Kitchin]

I am a happy mu4e + offlineimap user since January. Gmail is my mail
server, and I also check mail by phone, tablet, sometimes browser. I run
on a Mac with no issues so far. I would guess you could get a similar
setup on Linux easily enough. I never got a good solution on Windows.

To be fair, I have it set up to only update every 20 minutes, which I
like, and I can force it to update when I want, or sometimes I switch to
a browser at times where I need real-time updates. Most of the time I
don't want that though!

I did hack some things to get it more like the gmail experience I am
accustomed to like archiving, and I did hack a function to remove myself
from replies.

(defun remove-kitchin-emails ()
  "Removes me from the CC list. I do not need my own emails that I send."
  (interactive)
  (message-goto-cc)
  (save-restriction
    (let ((end (point))
          (start))

      (beginning-of-line)
      (setq start (point))
      (narrow-to-region start end)
      (mapc
       (lambda (email-to-remove)
         (beginning-of-line)
         (when  (re-search-forward email-to-remove nil t)
           (replace-match "")))
       '("John Kitchin <jkitchin@andrew.cmu.edu>,?"
         "John Kitchin <johnrkitchin@gmail.com>,?"
         "jkitchin@cmu.edu,>"
         "jkitchin@andrew.cmu.edu,>"
         "johnrkitchin@gmail.com,?"))))
  (message-goto-to)
  (when (message-field-value "To")
    (message-goto-body)))

;; append and make local
(add-hook 'mu4e-compose-mode-hook 'remove-kitchin-emails t)


I also built a helm-contacts completion tool that is better than the
completion I could use out of the box.

Anyway, it took a while to get what I wanted, but I have hardly any
complaints about it now that it works!

Xebar Saram writes:

> Hi list
>
> I know this is a bit off topic but im desperately looking for some advice
> regarding email through emacs.
>
> i have tried a bunch of them over the last month (gnus, mu4e, wanderlust,
> rmail,mew and maybe other i forget).
> I had various levels of success with each one to setup (it was never easy)
> but i ended up sorta settling on mu4e. the problem is that mu4e never
> managed to work properly for me (headers were not updating when new mail
> arrived, reply was broken etc) so i had to give up
>
> What i want is basically pretty simple. an easy to setup email for emacs,
> but one that would work tightly with gmail since i do a lot of mail
> checking on the road via my cellphone.
>
> any advise. recommendations or setups that maybe people are willing to
> share?
>
> thx so much in advance
>
> Z

--
Professor John Kitchin
Doherty Hall A207F
Department of Chemical Engineering
Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, PA 15213
412-268-7803
@johnkitchin
http://kitchingroup.cheme.cmu.edu

Re: [OFF TOPIC] almost giving up on emacs email..looking for advice?

[Titus von der Malsburg]

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Seconded.  Mu4e is one of my favorite things in Emacs and makes a big
difference in my professional life.  Its search capabilities are similar
to those offered by Gmail but Mu4e is faster and I don’t need to be
online.  I wrote helm-mu to optimize the search experience even further
(gives you instant search results as you type):

  https://github.com/emacs-helm/helm-mu

As an alternative to offlineimap, I recommend mbsync (also known as
isync) which is faster and overall more mature and reliable.

  Titus

On 2015-08-06 Thu 07:31, John Kitchin wrote:
> I am a happy mu4e + offlineimap user since January. Gmail is my mail
> server, and I also check mail by phone, tablet, sometimes browser. I run
> on a Mac with no issues so far. I would guess you could get a similar
> setup on Linux easily enough. I never got a good solution on Windows.
>
> To be fair, I have it set up to only update every 20 minutes, which I
> like, and I can force it to update when I want, or sometimes I switch to
> a browser at times where I need real-time updates. Most of the time I
> don't want that though!
>
> I did hack some things to get it more like the gmail experience I am
> accustomed to like archiving, and I did hack a function to remove myself
> from replies.
>
> (defun remove-kitchin-emails ()
>   "Removes me from the CC list. I do not need my own emails that I send."
>   (interactive)
>   (message-goto-cc)
>   (save-restriction
>     (let ((end (point))
>           (start))
>
>       (beginning-of-line)
>       (setq start (point))
>       (narrow-to-region start end)
>       (mapc
>        (lambda (email-to-remove)
>          (beginning-of-line)
>          (when  (re-search-forward email-to-remove nil t)
>            (replace-match "")))
>        '("John Kitchin <jkitchin@andrew.cmu.edu>,?"
>          "John Kitchin <johnrkitchin@gmail.com>,?"
>          "jkitchin@cmu.edu,>"
>          "jkitchin@andrew.cmu.edu,>"
>          "johnrkitchin@gmail.com,?"))))
>   (message-goto-to)
>   (when (message-field-value "To")
>     (message-goto-body)))
>
> ;; append and make local
> (add-hook 'mu4e-compose-mode-hook 'remove-kitchin-emails t)
>
>
> I also built a helm-contacts completion tool that is better than the
> completion I could use out of the box.
>
> Anyway, it took a while to get what I wanted, but I have hardly any
> complaints about it now that it works!
>
> Xebar Saram writes:
>
>> Hi list
>>
>> I know this is a bit off topic but im desperately looking for some advice
>> regarding email through emacs.
>>
>> i have tried a bunch of them over the last month (gnus, mu4e, wanderlust,
>> rmail,mew and maybe other i forget).
>> I had various levels of success with each one to setup (it was never easy)
>> but i ended up sorta settling on mu4e. the problem is that mu4e never
>> managed to work properly for me (headers were not updating when new mail
>> arrived, reply was broken etc) so i had to give up
>>
>> What i want is basically pretty simple. an easy to setup email for emacs,
>> but one that would work tightly with gmail since i do a lot of mail
>> checking on the road via my cellphone.
>>
>> any advise. recommendations or setups that maybe people are willing to
>> share?
>>
>> thx so much in advance
>>
>> Z


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Re: [OFF TOPIC] almost giving up on emacs email..looking for advice?

[Xebar Saram]

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thank so much everyone for your great tips and comments

you gave me more energy to further pursue  gnus and or mu4e

thanks again

Z

On Thu, Aug 6, 2015 at 7:50 PM, Titus von der Malsburg <malsburg@posteo.de>
wrote:

>
> Seconded.  Mu4e is one of my favorite things in Emacs and makes a big
> difference in my professional life.  Its search capabilities are similar
> to those offered by Gmail but Mu4e is faster and I don’t need to be
> online.  I wrote helm-mu to optimize the search experience even further
> (gives you instant search results as you type):
>
>   https://github.com/emacs-helm/helm-mu
>
> As an alternative to offlineimap, I recommend mbsync (also known as
> isync) which is faster and overall more mature and reliable.
>
>   Titus
>
> On 2015-08-06 Thu 07:31, John Kitchin wrote:
> > I am a happy mu4e + offlineimap user since January. Gmail is my mail
> > server, and I also check mail by phone, tablet, sometimes browser. I run
> > on a Mac with no issues so far. I would guess you could get a similar
> > setup on Linux easily enough. I never got a good solution on Windows.
> >
> > To be fair, I have it set up to only update every 20 minutes, which I
> > like, and I can force it to update when I want, or sometimes I switch to
> > a browser at times where I need real-time updates. Most of the time I
> > don't want that though!
> >
> > I did hack some things to get it more like the gmail experience I am
> > accustomed to like archiving, and I did hack a function to remove myself
> > from replies.
> >
> > (defun remove-kitchin-emails ()
> >   "Removes me from the CC list. I do not need my own emails that I send."
> >   (interactive)
> >   (message-goto-cc)
> >   (save-restriction
> >     (let ((end (point))
> >           (start))
> >
> >       (beginning-of-line)
> >       (setq start (point))
> >       (narrow-to-region start end)
> >       (mapc
> >        (lambda (email-to-remove)
> >          (beginning-of-line)
> >          (when  (re-search-forward email-to-remove nil t)
> >            (replace-match "")))
> >        '("John Kitchin <jkitchin@andrew.cmu.edu>,?"
> >          "John Kitchin <johnrkitchin@gmail.com>,?"
> >          "jkitchin@cmu.edu,>"
> >          "jkitchin@andrew.cmu.edu,>"
> >          "johnrkitchin@gmail.com,?"))))
> >   (message-goto-to)
> >   (when (message-field-value "To")
> >     (message-goto-body)))
> >
> > ;; append and make local
> > (add-hook 'mu4e-compose-mode-hook 'remove-kitchin-emails t)
> >
> >
> > I also built a helm-contacts completion tool that is better than the
> > completion I could use out of the box.
> >
> > Anyway, it took a while to get what I wanted, but I have hardly any
> > complaints about it now that it works!
> >
> > Xebar Saram writes:
> >
> >> Hi list
> >>
> >> I know this is a bit off topic but im desperately looking for some
> advice
> >> regarding email through emacs.
> >>
> >> i have tried a bunch of them over the last month (gnus, mu4e,
> wanderlust,
> >> rmail,mew and maybe other i forget).
> >> I had various levels of success with each one to setup (it was never
> easy)
> >> but i ended up sorta settling on mu4e. the problem is that mu4e never
> >> managed to work properly for me (headers were not updating when new mail
> >> arrived, reply was broken etc) so i had to give up
> >>
> >> What i want is basically pretty simple. an easy to setup email for
> emacs,
> >> but one that would work tightly with gmail since i do a lot of mail
> >> checking on the road via my cellphone.
> >>
> >> any advise. recommendations or setups that maybe people are willing to
> >> share?
> >>
> >> thx so much in advance
> >>
> >> Z
>
>

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Re: [OFF TOPIC] almost giving up on emacs email..looking for advice?

[Suvayu Ali]

On Thu, Aug 06, 2015 at 08:21:15PM +0300, Xebar Saram wrote:
> thank so much everyone for your great tips and comments
> 
> you gave me more energy to further pursue  gnus and or mu4e

There is also notmuch.  In fact, notmuch seems to have an edge over mu4e
when it comes to performance, at least that's my understanding.

I would like to say something though.  I think you should not blindly
keep on trying all these options, that would probably end up in
frustration all over again.  First you need to answer, how you use
email, how do you want to access it, and what kind of features do you
want.  You shouldn't limit yourself to Emacs either.  Eventhough Emacs
can do many things, often there are other tools which are better suited.

- Email could be a means for discussions, in that case it's a reference
  - Then you might want searchability, or someway to refer back to
    messages.
- It could be a todo list for you, in that case you want some way to
  filter and carry over your emails to your todo lists.
  - Do you want filtering for other purposes?
- You might want access to your emails over IMAP (it's immediate), or
  available locally (always there, not immediate).
- Local disk space constraints.
- Do you want access to your emails from multiple interfaces?
- Do you prefer using the terminal or a GUI?

As you see, there are lots of points to think about.

Hope this helps,

-- 
Suvayu

Open source is the future. It sets us free.

Re: [OFF TOPIC] almost giving up on emacs email..looking for advice?

[Jorge A. Alfaro-Murillo]

Xebar Saram writes:

> What i want is basically pretty simple. an easy to setup email 
> for emacs, but one that would work tightly with gmail since i do 
> a lot of mail checking on the road via my cellphone. 
> 
> any advise. recommendations or setups that maybe people are 
> willing to share?

The setup of gnus for gmail is quite simply:

#+BEGIN_SRC emacs-lisp
  (setq gnus-select-method '(nnimap "imap.gmail.com"))
  (setq smtpmail-default-smtp-server "smtp.gmail.com")
#+END_SRC
 
and in ~/.authinfo.gpg:

#+BEGIN_EXAMPLE
  machine imap.gmail.com login <username> password <password> port 
  imap
  machine smtp.gmail.com login <username> password <password> port 
  587
#+END_EXAMPLE  That is enough to get and check mail (M-x gnus) and 
send mail (C-x m).  Since it is imap, nothing is kept locally so 
whatever you do in gnus is reflected on your phone and vice versa.

One thing that bears mentioning is that gnus treats mail as news 
so it won't show you by default already read messages (like most 
mail apps), hit L to show all groups (as opposed to l for only 
groups with new messages) and enter the INBOX group to see all 
previous messages.

Best,
-- 
Jorge.

Re: [OFF TOPIC] almost giving up on emacs email..looking for advice?

[Ramon Diaz-Uriarte]

You have received several great answers already, but my 2 cents here.

I've used mu4e with offlineimap[1] for about three years now, and I am
reasonably happy with it. I particularly like the search capabilities
(which I now often complement with helm-mu). Setting it up was not
particularly hard (and how to configure for gmail was just a matter of
following the documentation), and I do not recall experiencing any of the
issues you mention (I had a few others, but they have disappeared over
versions).


Before that, I used wanderlust with offlineimap, and I also liked it a lot
(I think I got this to work from emacs-fu, the blog of mu4e's
author). Initial configuration wasn't really harder than mu4e (I think I
quickly found how to configure gmail by googling around). In fact, if you
are used to the gmail way of doing things, wanderlust might be more
familiar; for example, placing the same email in several folders, or
however you want to call them, or being shown the folder structure with
options to collapse/expand easily. Now, I actually prefer mu4e's approach
most of the time and don't care much about the folder structure (I search
and find; no need to try to recall where I filed a message).


Actually, to me, overall, wanderlust just seemed easier to use[2], and many
of the defaults made a lot more sense to me (i.e., with wanderlust I had to
google around less to find how to do what I wanted and I added less code to
my .emacs). That said, I haven't made any serious change to my mu4e
configuration in over two years, I think, so it is well amortized. 

I switched to mu4e because I was using wanderlust but searching for/within
emails with mu so I figured I might just do the full switch; as well,
development and activity around mu4e seemed, well, much more active.



In terms of checking email with gmail from other devices (tablet, phone): I
very rarely do so, but when I've needed to I've never had an issue while
using wanderlust + offlineimap or mu4e + offlineimap. Things work the way I
expect (changes in gmail if checked from my tablet show up in my computer
and viceversa). Of course, checking email from multiple computers has no
problems whatsoever.


Finally, even if setting email with emacs was not a half hour thing, I am
really glad I did so [3]. 


Best,


R.



[1] Offlineimap is slow, and has other issues. I searched for alternatives
two or three years ago, and did not find anything convincing (e.g., see
this resignated summary http://blog.ezyang.com/2012/08/offlineimap-sucks/
from a few years ago). After Titus' answer, I might give mbsync a try,
since now encrypted passwords are supported, etc.



[2] This is, of course, just my experience (or my incompetence). For
example, with mu4e I had to search around to find how to get a reasonable
way to add the date of the original message to the reply or forward but it
worked just fine for me with wanderlust. I still struggle with address
completion and blacklist in mu4e whereas address completion in wanderlust
with BBDB always did exactly what I wanted. Or when I started using mu4e I
missed a lot from wanderlust the C-c C-j that allows you to choose account
to send from. In all fairness this is also available for mu4e
(http://www.djcbsoftware.nl/code/mu/mu4e/Multiple-accounts.html) but
requires you to add some extra code.


[3] Why? I find the web interface of gmail slow to navigate, cumbersome,
and bloated. I also used kmail which was, well, OK, but it was not the
editor/environment I use for everything else (for a while, I used kmail but
used emacsclient for email writing) and searching was not what it is with
mu4e or helm-mu.



On Thu, 06-08-2015, at 14:43, Xebar Saram <zeltakc@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi list
>
> I know this is a bit off topic but im desperately looking for some advice
> regarding email through emacs.
>
> i have tried a bunch of them over the last month (gnus, mu4e, wanderlust,
> rmail,mew and maybe other i forget).
> I had various levels of success with each one to setup (it was never easy)
> but i ended up sorta settling on mu4e. the problem is that mu4e never
> managed to work properly for me (headers were not updating when new mail
> arrived, reply was broken etc) so i had to give up
>
> What i want is basically pretty simple. an easy to setup email for emacs,
> but one that would work tightly with gmail since i do a lot of mail
> checking on the road via my cellphone.
>
> any advise. recommendations or setups that maybe people are willing to
> share?
>
> thx so much in advance
>
> Z

-- 
Ramon Diaz-Uriarte
Department of Biochemistry, Lab B-25
Facultad de Medicina
Universidad Autónoma de Madrid 
Arzobispo Morcillo, 4
28029 Madrid
Spain

Phone: +34-91-497-2412

Email: rdiaz02@gmail.com
       ramon.diaz@iib.uam.es

http://ligarto.org/rdiaz

Re: [OFF TOPIC] almost giving up on emacs email..looking for advice?

[Peter Salazar]

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I also just installed notmuch, in addition to mu4e, and so far I quite like
notmuch. The interface so far is a little more intuitive (with mu4e, for
instance, I kept getting tripped up hitting "r" to reply to a message and
finding that it's bound to something else).

I did get offlineimap working, but I decided to switch to mbsync, which is
also working quite well. Let me know if you need pointers on setting it up.

On the topic of Emacs email, does anyone know how to set
message-citation-line-function so that replying doesn't quote/cite the
original message at all?


On Thu, Aug 6, 2015 at 7:51 PM, Ramon Diaz-Uriarte <rdiaz02@gmail.com>
wrote:

> You have received several great answers already, but my 2 cents here.
>
> I've used mu4e with offlineimap[1] for about three years now, and I am
> reasonably happy with it. I particularly like the search capabilities
> (which I now often complement with helm-mu). Setting it up was not
> particularly hard (and how to configure for gmail was just a matter of
> following the documentation), and I do not recall experiencing any of the
> issues you mention (I had a few others, but they have disappeared over
> versions).
>
>
> Before that, I used wanderlust with offlineimap, and I also liked it a lot
> (I think I got this to work from emacs-fu, the blog of mu4e's
> author). Initial configuration wasn't really harder than mu4e (I think I
> quickly found how to configure gmail by googling around). In fact, if you
> are used to the gmail way of doing things, wanderlust might be more
> familiar; for example, placing the same email in several folders, or
> however you want to call them, or being shown the folder structure with
> options to collapse/expand easily. Now, I actually prefer mu4e's approach
> most of the time and don't care much about the folder structure (I search
> and find; no need to try to recall where I filed a message).
>
>
> Actually, to me, overall, wanderlust just seemed easier to use[2], and many
> of the defaults made a lot more sense to me (i.e., with wanderlust I had to
> google around less to find how to do what I wanted and I added less code to
> my .emacs). That said, I haven't made any serious change to my mu4e
> configuration in over two years, I think, so it is well amortized.
>
> I switched to mu4e because I was using wanderlust but searching for/within
> emails with mu so I figured I might just do the full switch; as well,
> development and activity around mu4e seemed, well, much more active.
>
>
>
> In terms of checking email with gmail from other devices (tablet, phone): I
> very rarely do so, but when I've needed to I've never had an issue while
> using wanderlust + offlineimap or mu4e + offlineimap. Things work the way I
> expect (changes in gmail if checked from my tablet show up in my computer
> and viceversa). Of course, checking email from multiple computers has no
> problems whatsoever.
>
>
> Finally, even if setting email with emacs was not a half hour thing, I am
> really glad I did so [3].
>
>
> Best,
>
>
> R.
>
>
>
> [1] Offlineimap is slow, and has other issues. I searched for alternatives
> two or three years ago, and did not find anything convincing (e.g., see
> this resignated summary http://blog.ezyang.com/2012/08/offlineimap-sucks/
> from a few years ago). After Titus' answer, I might give mbsync a try,
> since now encrypted passwords are supported, etc.
>
>
>
> [2] This is, of course, just my experience (or my incompetence). For
> example, with mu4e I had to search around to find how to get a reasonable
> way to add the date of the original message to the reply or forward but it
> worked just fine for me with wanderlust. I still struggle with address
> completion and blacklist in mu4e whereas address completion in wanderlust
> with BBDB always did exactly what I wanted. Or when I started using mu4e I
> missed a lot from wanderlust the C-c C-j that allows you to choose account
> to send from. In all fairness this is also available for mu4e
> (http://www.djcbsoftware.nl/code/mu/mu4e/Multiple-accounts.html) but
> requires you to add some extra code.
>
>
> [3] Why? I find the web interface of gmail slow to navigate, cumbersome,
> and bloated. I also used kmail which was, well, OK, but it was not the
> editor/environment I use for everything else (for a while, I used kmail but
> used emacsclient for email writing) and searching was not what it is with
> mu4e or helm-mu.
>
>
>
> On Thu, 06-08-2015, at 14:43, Xebar Saram <zeltakc@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hi list
> >
> > I know this is a bit off topic but im desperately looking for some advice
> > regarding email through emacs.
> >
> > i have tried a bunch of them over the last month (gnus, mu4e, wanderlust,
> > rmail,mew and maybe other i forget).
> > I had various levels of success with each one to setup (it was never
> easy)
> > but i ended up sorta settling on mu4e. the problem is that mu4e never
> > managed to work properly for me (headers were not updating when new mail
> > arrived, reply was broken etc) so i had to give up
> >
> > What i want is basically pretty simple. an easy to setup email for emacs,
> > but one that would work tightly with gmail since i do a lot of mail
> > checking on the road via my cellphone.
> >
> > any advise. recommendations or setups that maybe people are willing to
> > share?
> >
> > thx so much in advance
> >
> > Z
>
> --
> Ramon Diaz-Uriarte
> Department of Biochemistry, Lab B-25
> Facultad de Medicina
> Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
> Arzobispo Morcillo, 4
> 28029 Madrid
> Spain
>
> Phone: +34-91-497-2412
>
> Email: rdiaz02@gmail.com
>        ramon.diaz@iib.uam.es
>
> http://ligarto.org/rdiaz
>
>

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Re: [OFF TOPIC] almost giving up on emacs email..looking for advice?

[Fabrice Popineau]

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On this thread, I will report quite a different user experience.
I have been a long time user of emacs and Gnus (Emacs since 1987).
I have been using (ding) Gnus under Windows NT in the late 90's and up to
about 2010.

But now, I process my mail using the GMail browser interface.
The reasons are mostly due to :
- emacs is slow, chrome displays email more precisely and more quickly
- emacs is not multi-threaded, hence it may get stuck processing stuff.
Using the browser to process mail allows me not to be disturbed when I'm
writing documents or programming using Emacs.

I'll keep and eye on the solutions that have been reported here though.

Best regards,

Fabrice

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Re: [OFF TOPIC] almost giving up on emacs email..looking for advice?

[Peter Davis]

Fabrice Popineau <fabrice.popineau@supelec.fr> writes:

> On this thread, I will report quite a different user experience.
> I have been a long time user of emacs and Gnus (Emacs since 1987).
> I have been using (ding) Gnus under Windows NT in the late 90's and up
> to about 2010.
>
> But now, I process my mail using the GMail browser interface.
> The reasons are mostly due to :
> - emacs is slow, chrome displays email more precisely and more quickly
> - emacs is not multi-threaded, hence it may get stuck processing
> stuff. 
> Using the browser to process mail allows me not to be disturbed when
> I'm writing documents or programming using Emacs.
>
> I'll keep and eye on the solutions that have been reported here
> though.

Interesting. I use a variety of email clients, mainly browser-based ones (GMail, Fastmail), Thunderbird, and gnus. I keep gnus in
the arsenal for three main reasons:

1) I can do everything quickly without having to move my hands from the keyboard. If there isn't already a shortcut for what I want,
I can add one.

2) I need a decent editor for replies. I have not found a browser-based client that has this.

3) To bring this somewhat back on topic, I've recently discovered org capture, and I love the fact that I can capture a note with a
link to a specific email message.

That last feature alone is reason enough for me.  FWIW, I'm on a Mac, and I generally use Gnu emacs for editing, programming, etc.,
and use Aquamacs for running gnus. This avoids any latency problems, etc.

-pd

Re: [OFF TOPIC] almost giving up on emacs email..looking for advice?

[Fabrice Popineau]

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2015-08-11 14:23 GMT+02:00 Peter Davis <pfd@pfdstudio.com>:

>
> 2) I need a decent editor for replies. I have not found a browser-based
> client that has this.
>
> Agreed. The biggest problem arises when you need to format code.
There is an "edit with emacs" extension for chrome which is working quite
well.


> That last feature alone is reason enough for me.  FWIW, I'm on a Mac, and
> I generally use Gnu emacs for editing, programming, etc.,
> and use Aquamacs for running gnus. This avoids any latency problems, etc.
>
>
So you are running 2 instances of Emacs. This is what I considered for a
moment :-)

Fabrice

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Re: [OFF TOPIC] almost giving up on emacs email..looking for advice?

[Rasmus]

Fabrice Popineau <fabrice.popineau@supelec.fr> writes:

>> That last feature alone is reason enough for me.  FWIW, I'm on a Mac, and
>> I generally use Gnu emacs for editing, programming, etc.,
>> and use Aquamacs for running gnus. This avoids any latency problems, etc.
>>
>>
> So you are running 2 instances of Emacs. This is what I considered for a
> moment :-)

I typically run three Emacs servers.  One for editing, one for Gnus and
one for EMMS.  I change the icon, title and background color based on the
"purpose" of the instance.

Rasmus

-- 
May the Force be with you

Re: [OFF TOPIC] almost giving up on emacs email..looking for advice?

[Nicolas Richard]

Peter Davis <pfd@pfdstudio.com> writes:
> 2) I need a decent editor for replies. I have not found a
> browser-based client that has this.


Firefox has an extension,
https://addons.mozilla.org/fr/firefox/addon/its-all-text/, which allows
you to edit any text in your favourite editor (aka emacs) with
emacsclient.

-- 
Nico

Re: [OFF TOPIC] almost giving up on emacs email..looking for advice?

[Suvayu Ali]

On Tue, Aug 11, 2015 at 02:35:57PM +0200, Nicolas Richard wrote:
> Peter Davis <pfd@pfdstudio.com> writes:
> > 2) I need a decent editor for replies. I have not found a
> > browser-based client that has this.
> 
> 
> Firefox has an extension,
> https://addons.mozilla.org/fr/firefox/addon/its-all-text/, which allows
> you to edit any text in your favourite editor (aka emacs) with
> emacsclient.

Doesn't work anymore with Gmail.

  https://github.com/docwhat/itsalltext/issues/36

-- 
Suvayu

Open source is the future. It sets us free.

Re: [OFF TOPIC] almost giving up on emacs email..looking for advice?

[Scott Randby]

On 08/11/2015 08:23 AM, Peter Davis wrote:
>
> 2) I need a decent editor for replies. I have not found a
> browser-based client that has this.

For me, setting up any of the Emacs email clients to work properly with 
my various email tasks is a daunting task. This especially true for my 
work email account which is not a Gmail account. I simply don't have the 
technical knowledge to get everything working, and I don't have the time 
to acquire that technical knowledge.

As a result, I use Thunderbird for all of my email and feed reading 
tasks. Thunderbird is trivial for me to set up, it is very easy to use, 
and I can still use Emacs for writing and editing email (as I'm doing 
now) with the External Editor add-on (http://globs.org/).

Scott Randby

>
> 3) To bring this somewhat back on topic, I've recently discovered
> org capture, and I love the fact that I can capture a note with a
> link to a specific email message.  That last feature alone is reason
> enough for me.  FWIW, I'm on a Mac, and I generally use Gnu emacs
> for editing, programming, etc., and use Aquamacs for running
> gnus. This avoids any latency problems, etc.
>
> -pd
>
>
>

Re: [OFF TOPIC] almost giving up on emacs email..looking for advice?

[Peter Davis]

Scott Randby <srandby@gmail.com> writes:

> On 08/11/2015 08:23 AM, Peter Davis wrote:
>>
>> 2) I need a decent editor for replies. I have not found a
>> browser-based client that has this.
>
> For me, setting up any of the Emacs email clients to work properly
> with my various email tasks is a daunting task. This especially true
> for my work email account which is not a Gmail account. I simply don't
> have the technical knowledge to get everything working, and I don't
> have the time to acquire that technical knowledge.

This has certainly been the case for me with gnus. I spent years (literally) playing with gnus and giving up, only to be drawn back
to it weeks, months or years later to try again. Seriously, it was only after years of this that I managed to get things working
well enough to actually use gnus, and even at that I only use it with IMAP.

FWIW, I also used VM for a while (easier to configure, but much less powerful), MH-E, Wanderlust as well as non-Emacs clients
(Sylpheed, mutt, Thunderbird, and others.) It's a crowded field. I generally liked some things about each of these, and disliked
others. There's no perfect solution.

One of the persistent frustrations for me with Thunderbird is that it still, even years after the problem was reported, can't get
the unread counts correct for various folders all the time. It frequently shows unread counts for folders that have no unread
messages, and vice versa.

I get hundreds of messages a day, so I like to just be able to plow through them quickly, replying as needed, flagging some for
later attention, etc. Mutt was actually the fastest for that, but I hate the way it displays HTML messages with w3m in dump
mode. Mutt is also pretty challenging to configure, and that has to be re-created for each new machine. With gnus, I just copy my
.gnus.el file over and, bam, done.

-pd

Re: [OFF TOPIC] almost giving up on emacs email..looking for advice?

[Xebar Saram]

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On Tue, Aug 11, 2015 at 5:16 PM, Peter Davis <pfd@pfdstudio.com> wrote:

> spent years (literally) playing with gnus and giving up, only to be drawn
> back
> to it weeks, months or years later to try again. Seriously, it was only
> after years of this that I managed to get things working
> well enough to actually use gnus, and even at that I only use it with IMAP.
>

Hehe this is *exactly* what i have experienced. im dying to move over to
emacs for emails but so far both gnus and mu4e are giving me so many issues
(and it may be that im just not smart enough to configure them properly).
The latest i tried was setting up gnus via imap (gmail ) which worked for
approximately 2 hours before getting errors and making me (once again..)
give up and crawl back defeated to gmail :) plus the fact that i need a
separate emacs session just for mail and all other small quirks in gnus are
kind of a pain to setup (at least it seems so).
mu4e seemed so promising but for me it seems that no matter what i do i
cant get the headers to auto refresh when i get a new email which is
driving me crazy so had to give up on that.


Z

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Re: [OFF TOPIC] almost giving up on emacs email..looking for advice?

[Scott Randby]

On 08/11/2015 10:16 AM, Peter Davis wrote:

> One of the persistent frustrations for me with Thunderbird is that
> it still, even years after the problem was reported, can't get the
> unread counts correct for various folders all the time. It
> frequently shows unread counts for folders that have no unread
> messages, and vice versa.

I know this is way off topic, but I've not experienced the unread 
messages bug with Thunderbird (fortunately). This might be due to the 
fact that I use POP instead of IMAP, or perhaps it may be because my 
daily email traffic is rather small (mostly messages from this list). My 
biggest beef with Thunderbird is that it doesn't follow the preferences 
I've set for news feeds.

Scott

Re: [OFF TOPIC] almost giving up on emacs email..looking for advice?

[Peter Salazar]

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Like Fabrice, I also still process my email using the Gmail web interface.
The only reason I want email within Emacs is so I can compose replies in a
proper editor with all my keybindings. I tried Chrome's Edit with Emacs,
but it loses line breaks when it sends the output from Emacs back to Gmail.
So I prefer to write replies within Emacs.

Since I only need a small fraction of my emails to go through Emacs, I set
up mbsync to pull only my starred messages:

Channel gmail-starred
Master :gmail-remote:"[Gmail]/Starred"
Slave :gmail-local:starred
Create Both
Expunge Both
SyncState *

If this is of interest to you I can share my setup.

On Tue, Aug 11, 2015 at 8:23 AM, Peter Davis <pfd@pfdstudio.com> wrote:

> Fabrice Popineau <fabrice.popineau@supelec.fr> writes:
>
> > On this thread, I will report quite a different user experience.
> > I have been a long time user of emacs and Gnus (Emacs since 1987).
> > I have been using (ding) Gnus under Windows NT in the late 90's and up
> > to about 2010.
> >
> > But now, I process my mail using the GMail browser interface.
> > The reasons are mostly due to :
> > - emacs is slow, chrome displays email more precisely and more quickly
> > - emacs is not multi-threaded, hence it may get stuck processing
> > stuff.
> > Using the browser to process mail allows me not to be disturbed when
> > I'm writing documents or programming using Emacs.
> >
> > I'll keep and eye on the solutions that have been reported here
> > though.
>
> Interesting. I use a variety of email clients, mainly browser-based ones
> (GMail, Fastmail), Thunderbird, and gnus. I keep gnus in
> the arsenal for three main reasons:
>
> 1) I can do everything quickly without having to move my hands from the
> keyboard. If there isn't already a shortcut for what I want,
> I can add one.
>
> 2) I need a decent editor for replies. I have not found a browser-based
> client that has this.
>
> 3) To bring this somewhat back on topic, I've recently discovered org
> capture, and I love the fact that I can capture a note with a
> link to a specific email message.
>
> That last feature alone is reason enough for me.  FWIW, I'm on a Mac, and
> I generally use Gnu emacs for editing, programming, etc.,
> and use Aquamacs for running gnus. This avoids any latency problems, etc.
>
> -pd
>
>
>

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Re: [OFF TOPIC] almost giving up on emacs email..looking for advice?

[Eric Abrahamsen]

Peter Salazar <cycleofsong@gmail.com> writes:

> Like Fabrice, I also still process my email using the Gmail web
> interface. The only reason I want email within Emacs is so I can
> compose replies in a proper editor with all my keybindings. I tried
> Chrome's Edit with Emacs, but it loses line breaks when it sends the
> output from Emacs back to Gmail. So I prefer to write replies within
> Emacs.
>
> Since I only need a small fraction of my emails to go through Emacs, I
> set up mbsync to pull only my starred messages:
>
> Channel gmail-starred
> Master :gmail-remote:"[Gmail]/Starred" 
> Slave :gmail-local:starred
> Create Both
> Expunge Both
> SyncState *
>
> If this is of interest to you I can share my setup. 

I agree that having email accessible locally is key to making Gnus
usable. All my email is synced to local dovecot server, and Gnus
accesses that -- no lag at all. Sending messages is still a big pain,
though. I send using msmtp, and there's an add-on called msmtp-queue
that would apparently allow Gnus to hand off messages instantly, but
I've never spent the time to get it set up. I sure wish IMAP could
handle both sending and receiving messages!

E

> On Tue, Aug 11, 2015 at 8:23 AM, Peter Davis <pfd@pfdstudio.com>
> wrote:
>
>
>     Fabrice Popineau <fabrice.popineau@supelec.fr> writes:
>
>     > On this thread, I will report quite a different user experience.
>     > I have been a long time user of emacs and Gnus (Emacs since
>     1987).
>     > I have been using (ding) Gnus under Windows NT in the late 90's
>     and up
>     > to about 2010.
>     >
>     > But now, I process my mail using the GMail browser interface.
>     > The reasons are mostly due to :
>     > - emacs is slow, chrome displays email more precisely and more
>     quickly
>     > - emacs is not multi-threaded, hence it may get stuck processing
>     > stuff.
>     > Using the browser to process mail allows me not to be disturbed
>     when
>     > I'm writing documents or programming using Emacs.
>     >
>     > I'll keep and eye on the solutions that have been reported here
>     > though.
>
>     Interesting. I use a variety of email clients, mainly
>     browser-based ones (GMail, Fastmail), Thunderbird, and gnus. I
>     keep gnus in
>     the arsenal for three main reasons:
>
>     1) I can do everything quickly without having to move my hands
>     from the keyboard. If there isn't already a shortcut for what I
>     want,
>     I can add one.
>
>     2) I need a decent editor for replies. I have not found a
>     browser-based client that has this.
>
>     3) To bring this somewhat back on topic, I've recently discovered
>     org capture, and I love the fact that I can capture a note with a
>     link to a specific email message.
>
>     That last feature alone is reason enough for me. FWIW, I'm on a
>     Mac, and I generally use Gnu emacs for editing, programming, etc.,
>     and use Aquamacs for running gnus. This avoids any latency
>     problems, etc.
>
>     -pd

Re: [OFF TOPIC] almost giving up on emacs email..looking for advice?

[Rasmus]

Eric Abrahamsen <eric@ericabrahamsen.net> writes:

> Peter Salazar <cycleofsong@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> Like Fabrice, I also still process my email using the Gmail web
>> interface. The only reason I want email within Emacs is so I can
>> compose replies in a proper editor with all my keybindings. I tried
>> Chrome's Edit with Emacs, but it loses line breaks when it sends the
>> output from Emacs back to Gmail. So I prefer to write replies within
>> Emacs.
>>
>> Since I only need a small fraction of my emails to go through Emacs, I
>> set up mbsync to pull only my starred messages:
>>
>> Channel gmail-starred
>> Master :gmail-remote:"[Gmail]/Starred" 
>> Slave :gmail-local:starred
>> Create Both
>> Expunge Both
>> SyncState *
>>
>> If this is of interest to you I can share my setup. 
>
> I agree that having email accessible locally is key to making Gnus
> usable. All my email is synced to local dovecot server, and Gnus
> accesses that -- no lag at all. Sending messages is still a big pain,
> though. I send using msmtp, and there's an add-on called msmtp-queue
> that would apparently allow Gnus to hand off messages instantly, but
> I've never spent the time to get it set up. I sure wish IMAP could
> handle both sending and receiving messages!

Sending messages in Gnus is trival these days.  It works out of the box
when you add a X-Message-SMTP-Method header (and GCC for saving a copy to
Sent).  I use smtp server from GMX, my own mail server and Outlook (I've
used google mail in the past).

Rasmus

-- 
It was you, Jezebel, it was you

Re: [OFF TOPIC] almost giving up on emacs email..looking for advice?

[Eric Abrahamsen]

Rasmus <rasmus@gmx.us> writes:

> Eric Abrahamsen <eric@ericabrahamsen.net> writes:
>
>> Peter Salazar <cycleofsong@gmail.com> writes:
>>
>>> Like Fabrice, I also still process my email using the Gmail web
>>> interface. The only reason I want email within Emacs is so I can
>>> compose replies in a proper editor with all my keybindings. I tried
>>> Chrome's Edit with Emacs, but it loses line breaks when it sends the
>>> output from Emacs back to Gmail. So I prefer to write replies within
>>> Emacs.
>>>
>>> Since I only need a small fraction of my emails to go through Emacs, I
>>> set up mbsync to pull only my starred messages:
>>>
>>> Channel gmail-starred
>>> Master :gmail-remote:"[Gmail]/Starred" 
>>> Slave :gmail-local:starred
>>> Create Both
>>> Expunge Both
>>> SyncState *
>>>
>>> If this is of interest to you I can share my setup. 
>>
>> I agree that having email accessible locally is key to making Gnus
>> usable. All my email is synced to local dovecot server, and Gnus
>> accesses that -- no lag at all. Sending messages is still a big pain,
>> though. I send using msmtp, and there's an add-on called msmtp-queue
>> that would apparently allow Gnus to hand off messages instantly, but
>> I've never spent the time to get it set up. I sure wish IMAP could
>> handle both sending and receiving messages!
>
> Sending messages in Gnus is trival these days.  It works out of the box
> when you add a X-Message-SMTP-Method header (and GCC for saving a copy to
> Sent).  I use smtp server from GMX, my own mail server and Outlook (I've
> used google mail in the past).

It's not trivial when you live in China :)

I can make it work, between alternate IP addresses and ssh tunnels, but
it involves a lot of cursing and grinding my teeth. In a hostile network
environment any client will face the same problems, but the lack of
threading becomes pretty apparent here.

Someday I will set up my own mail server, when I'm in bed with a broken
leg, maybe. I have so many "broken-leg" projects waiting, I hate to
think of what sort of accident I'd have to be in to get them all
completed.

Re: [OFF TOPIC] almost giving up on emacs email..looking for advice?

[Rasmus]

Eric Abrahamsen <eric@ericabrahamsen.net> writes:

> It's not trivial when you live in China :)
>
> I can make it work, between alternate IP addresses and ssh tunnels, but
> it involves a lot of cursing and grinding my teeth. In a hostile network
> environment any client will face the same problems, but the lack of
> threading becomes pretty apparent here.

I don't know what the great firewall is like, but for "hostile networks"
around here (universities blocking git, airports blocking smtp/imap etc),
I use openvpn.  Are commercial openvpn provides blocked in China?

Rasmus

-- 
Dung makes an excellent fertilizer

Re: [OFF TOPIC] almost giving up on emacs email..looking for advice?

[Eric Abrahamsen]

Rasmus <rasmus@gmx.us> writes:

> Eric Abrahamsen <eric@ericabrahamsen.net> writes:
>
>> It's not trivial when you live in China :)
>>
>> I can make it work, between alternate IP addresses and ssh tunnels, but
>> it involves a lot of cursing and grinding my teeth. In a hostile network
>> environment any client will face the same problems, but the lack of
>> threading becomes pretty apparent here.
>
> I don't know what the great firewall is like, but for "hostile networks"
> around here (universities blocking git, airports blocking smtp/imap etc),
> I use openvpn.  Are commercial openvpn provides blocked in China?

Both commercial providers, and non-commercial providers! I set up my own
OpenVPN server on a US server, and that worked for a couple of years.
Then they caught it, and I switched to a non-standard port. That worked
for another four months or so, and now it doesn't work on any port. I'm
sure OpenVPN traffic is pretty easily sniffable.

My next project is ipsec (another broken-leg project). But I figure, if
I can google up these solutions, so can they, and the packet signatures
of all these different systems must be quite identifiable.

Using vanilla ssh seems fairly reliable: for the time being, I don't
think they'd go so far as to block ssh across the board. That would
really be declaring war on the internet. So sshuttle, tunnels, and the
built-in ssh SOCKS proxy are serving me well. Using dnscrypt-proxy
actually solves many of the problems -- in years past, it would have
solved everything, but they've started hell-banning IP ranges, and of
course that includes gmail. My own dumb fault for using gmail, I guess.

How off-topic can we get? :)

Re: [OFF TOPIC] almost giving up on emacs email..looking for advice?

[Rasmus]

Hi,

Eric Abrahamsen <eric@ericabrahamsen.net> writes:

> Rasmus <rasmus@gmx.us> writes:
>
>> Eric Abrahamsen <eric@ericabrahamsen.net> writes:
>>
>>> It's not trivial when you live in China :)
>>>
>>> I can make it work, between alternate IP addresses and ssh tunnels, but
>>> it involves a lot of cursing and grinding my teeth. In a hostile network
>>> environment any client will face the same problems, but the lack of
>>> threading becomes pretty apparent here.
>>
>> I don't know what the great firewall is like, but for "hostile networks"
>> around here (universities blocking git, airports blocking smtp/imap etc),
>> I use openvpn.  Are commercial openvpn provides blocked in China?
>
> Both commercial providers, and non-commercial providers! I set up my own
> OpenVPN server on a US server, and that worked for a couple of years.
> Then they caught it, and I switched to a non-standard port. That worked
> for another four months or so, and now it doesn't work on any port. I'm
> sure OpenVPN traffic is pretty easily sniffable.

But what if you use TCP 443?  That should be hard to detect, though speed
might not be great...  I guess https is OK in China.

First link from startpage.com:

      https://www.bestvpn.com/blog/5919/how-to-hide-openvpn-traffic-an-introduction/

> My next project is ipsec (another broken-leg project). But I figure, if
> I can google up these solutions, so can they, and the packet signatures
> of all these different systems must be quite identifiable.

Isn't ipsec as less popular version of Tor?  BTW: I tried Tor again in the
weekend since a relative was asking about it.  Speed seems to have gotten
a lot better (I'm in EU).

> Using vanilla ssh seems fairly reliable: for the time being, I don't
> think they'd go so far as to block ssh across the board. That would
> really be declaring war on the internet. So sshuttle, tunnels, and the
> built-in ssh SOCKS proxy are serving me well. Using dnscrypt-proxy
> actually solves many of the problems -- in years past, it would have
> solved everything, but they've started hell-banning IP ranges, and of
> course that includes gmail. My own dumb fault for using gmail, I guess.

The problem for me with socks is that it doesn't allow arbitrary port
connections (I mostly deal with bad network configs, e.g. closed XMPP or
git ports).

> How off-topic can we get? :)

It's interesting.  And +30°C.  It's fineeee!  Thanks for sharing!

Rasmus

-- 
May the Force be with you

Re: [OFF TOPIC] almost giving up on emacs email..looking for advice?

[Eric Abrahamsen]

Rasmus <rasmus@gmx.us> writes:

> Hi,
>
> Eric Abrahamsen <eric@ericabrahamsen.net> writes:
>
>> Rasmus <rasmus@gmx.us> writes:
>>
>>> Eric Abrahamsen <eric@ericabrahamsen.net> writes:
>>>
>>>> It's not trivial when you live in China :)
>>>>
>>>> I can make it work, between alternate IP addresses and ssh tunnels, but
>>>> it involves a lot of cursing and grinding my teeth. In a hostile network
>>>> environment any client will face the same problems, but the lack of
>>>> threading becomes pretty apparent here.
>>>
>>> I don't know what the great firewall is like, but for "hostile networks"
>>> around here (universities blocking git, airports blocking smtp/imap etc),
>>> I use openvpn.  Are commercial openvpn provides blocked in China?
>>
>> Both commercial providers, and non-commercial providers! I set up my own
>> OpenVPN server on a US server, and that worked for a couple of years.
>> Then they caught it, and I switched to a non-standard port. That worked
>> for another four months or so, and now it doesn't work on any port. I'm
>> sure OpenVPN traffic is pretty easily sniffable.
>
> But what if you use TCP 443?  That should be hard to detect, though speed
> might not be great...  I guess https is OK in China.
>
> First link from startpage.com:
>
>       https://www.bestvpn.com/blog/5919/how-to-hide-openvpn-traffic-an-introduction/

Oh, interesting! Let me fire up my ssh tunnel so I can open the link...

Okay, that's really useful, I'll try some of these solutions, thank you.
I'll admit I'm often too impatient to sit down and do the research.

startpage.com is nice, but it looks like they've already found that. I'm
using search.disconnect.me, which is great, and so far open.

>> My next project is ipsec (another broken-leg project). But I figure, if
>> I can google up these solutions, so can they, and the packet signatures
>> of all these different systems must be quite identifiable.
>
> Isn't ipsec as less popular version of Tor?  BTW: I tried Tor again in the
> weekend since a relative was asking about it.  Speed seems to have gotten
> a lot better (I'm in EU).

I don't think it's like Tor, as in I don't think it's P2P. I tried Tor a
couple of years ago and it was unusably slow -- maybe it's time again.

>> Using vanilla ssh seems fairly reliable: for the time being, I don't
>> think they'd go so far as to block ssh across the board. That would
>> really be declaring war on the internet. So sshuttle, tunnels, and the
>> built-in ssh SOCKS proxy are serving me well. Using dnscrypt-proxy
>> actually solves many of the problems -- in years past, it would have
>> solved everything, but they've started hell-banning IP ranges, and of
>> course that includes gmail. My own dumb fault for using gmail, I guess.
>
> The problem for me with socks is that it doesn't allow arbitrary port
> connections (I mostly deal with bad network configs, e.g. closed XMPP or
> git ports).

I only use socks for sending email, so it works fine. I've ended up with
multiple concurrent solutions, which doesn't bother me too much. But if
I could get openvpn back online, I'd like to just use that. If I could
set up some sort of selective tunneling, based on a whitelist of hosts,
that would be nice...

>> How off-topic can we get? :)
>
> It's interesting.  And +30°C.  It's fineeee!  Thanks for sharing!

Fun stuff! I'll report back with any surprising news.

Re: [OFF TOPIC] almost giving up on emacs email..looking for advice?

[Matt Lundin]

Fabrice Popineau <fabrice.popineau@supelec.fr> writes:

> On this thread, I will report quite a different user experience.
> I have been a long time user of emacs and Gnus (Emacs since 1987).
> I have been using (ding) Gnus under Windows NT in the late 90's and up
> to about 2010.
>
> But now, I process my mail using the GMail browser interface.
> The reasons are mostly due to :
> - emacs is slow, chrome displays email more precisely and more quickly
> - emacs is not multi-threaded, hence it may get stuck processing
> stuff. 

Just to add my own off-topic contribution to this thread...

I've found that gnus has sped up a good deal since 2010. I believe there
have been some optimizatons in the code in the last several years. It
takes about 5 seconds to start gnus on my under-powered machine, and
that is with 4 nntp accounts (including rss via gwene.org), 2 email
backends, and far too many groups! :) And this is with a lot of sorting
and mail splitting. E.g., I've configured gnus to sort subscribed groups
automatically by the number of times accessed, with the least read
groups falling to the bottom.

In my own experience (YMMV), I find the speed gain of navigating mail
and news in gnus makes up for the brief lock-ups caused by (re)starting
gnus or accessing a very large nntp group. I particularly appreciate the
ability to insert the text of attachments into the buffer (via docx2txt,
antiword, pdftotext, etc.) and to clip their contents into org-mode.

Matt

Re: [OFF TOPIC] almost giving up on emacs email..looking for advice?

[Bastien Guerry]

Hi Matt,

Matt Lundin <mdl@imapmail.org> writes:

> I've configured gnus to sort subscribed groups
> automatically by the number of times accessed, with the least read
> groups falling to the bottom.

This is interesting: could you share this bit of configuration?

Thanks!

-- 
 Bastien

Re: [OFF TOPIC] almost giving up on emacs email..looking for advice?

[Matt Lundin]

Hi Bastien,

Bastien Guerry <bzg@gnu.org> writes:

> Hi Matt,
>
> Matt Lundin <mdl@imapmail.org> writes:
>
>> I've configured gnus to sort subscribed groups
>> automatically by the number of times accessed, with the least read
>> groups falling to the bottom.
>
> This is interesting: could you share this bit of configuration?

Certainly! These are the settings I have:

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
(setq gnus-group-sort-function 'gnus-group-sort-by-rank)
(add-hook 'gnus-summary-exit-hook 'gnus-summary-bubble-group)
(add-hook 'gnus-suspend-gnus-hook 'gnus-group-sort-groups-by-rank)
(add-hook 'gnus-exit-gnus-hook 'gnus-group-sort-groups-by-rank)
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

This causes gnus to bump up ("bubble") the score of a group each time
you read it. Then, whenever you exit or suspend gnus, all the groups
will be sorted according to their a) level and b) score (i.e., the
number of times read). All memory of a group's score will be wiped out
if you unsubscribe or kill the group.

Initially, I tried to add gnus-group-sort-by-rank to
gnus-summary-exit-hook, but I seem to remember that it interfered too
much with navigating the summary buffer.

Here's the relevant section of the manual:

https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/gnus/Group-Score.html#Group-Score

There may be something else in my config file that makes this work, so
feel free to let me know if the settings above don't produce the results
you expect.

Matt

Re: [OFF TOPIC] almost giving up on emacs email..looking for advice?

[Bastien]

Hi Matt,

Matt Lundin <mdl@imapmail.org> writes:

> Certainly! These are the settings I have:

I'm using this now and it works well, thanks a lot!

-- 
 Bastien

Re: [OFF TOPIC] almost giving up on emacs email..looking for advice?

[Gerald Wildgruber]

Hi,

I'm very happy with mu4e!

http://www.djcbsoftware.nl/code/mu/mu4e.html
https://github.com/djcb/mu

Its speed and ease in searching are unparalleled: the results of
searches in tens of thousands of mails is immediate. I like its concepts
of generating folders only virtually through searches: everything is
search. The only lag that might occur is during sending. Yet by using,
not the SMTP implementation that comes with emacs but a local postfix
installation or something like nullmailer:

http://vxlabs.com/2014/06/06/configuring-emacs-mu4e-with-nullmailer-offlineimap-and-multiple-identities

mail is taken over in the background and no time is lost. mu4e (an its
database backend mu) work on local copies of mail (sync'ed e.g. by
offlineimap). In conjunction with offlineimap interfacing with Gmail is
easy and well documented.

Gerald.

On Di, Aug 11 2015, Fabrice Popineau <fabrice.popineau@supelec.fr> wrote:

> On this thread, I will report quite a different user experience.
> I have been a long time user of emacs and Gnus (Emacs since 1987).
> I have been using (ding) Gnus under Windows NT in the late 90's and up to
> about 2010.
>
> But now, I process my mail using the GMail browser interface.
> The reasons are mostly due to :
> - emacs is slow, chrome displays email more precisely and more quickly
> - emacs is not multi-threaded, hence it may get stuck processing stuff.
> Using the browser to process mail allows me not to be disturbed when I'm
> writing documents or programming using Emacs.
>
> I'll keep and eye on the solutions that have been reported here though.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Fabrice