Re: tlug: Mew on (X)Emacs the way to go?

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <turnbull@example.com>]

>>>>> "Manu" == Manuel M T Chakravarty <chak@example.com> writes:

    Manu> John De Hoog <washi@example.com> wrote,
    >> An unofficial survey of the headers of posters to this ML
    >> indicates that quite a few of you use Mew on Emacs or
    >> especially XEmacs for your email.

    Manu> I only recently switched to Mew (but use Emacs to prcosses
    Manu> my e-mail for years).

I tried MEW, didn't much like it.  IM was still buggy then, though.

One big issue with MEW is file-per-message storage.  You may like
that, you may not.  There was an option to disable it that didn't
work, I don't know whether it was fixed or removed.

    >> As a Linux wannabe still mainly using NT, I find Becky! 
    >> Internet Mail meets my needs pretty well: -- polling multiple
    >> POP servers automatically

(VM will do POP for sure, Gnus not, I think, see below.)  Like Manuel,
I recommend use of fetchmail to handle the POP service.  This allows
use of tools like sendmail/smail/qmail/exim and procmail.

    >> -- filtering and all that

    Manu> Usually done by the MTA (eg, sendmail).

Do you mean for spam?  Sendmail does that, somewhat, but most people
use procmail for splitting into separate mail folders.

    >> -- displaying html posts

    Manu> Hmm, I don't think it automatically does, but I seldom get
    Manu> html posts, so I am not sure.  However, there is a html
    Manu> renderer included in Emacs and I don't see any fundamental
    Manu> problem in using it to diaplay e-mails.

If you're talking about w3.el, it's slow, and RMS has pissed off the
author so support is not as good for Emacs 20 as it was previously.

AFAIK the usual recommended solution to html emails in emacs is to put 
the sender in your spam filter.  Unfortunately....

    >> -- threaded views

    Manu> Not supported in Mew, I think, but probably in other
    Manu> Emacs-based mailers (maybe in VM?)

VM and Gnus both provide threading.  VM is superior in many ways for
ordinary mail reading purposes; it's far more flexible in how it
groups things and allows virtual grouping.  VM's internal MIME is
pretty good, better on the viewing than the sending for Japanese,
though.  VM recently has been completely unsupported on Emacs 20 (many
of its features were developed specifically to take advantage of
XEmacs), although it may be working by now.  Gnus is a newsreader
first, so it is quite good for reading mailing lists, not quite as
flexible for random ordinary mail.

What does mew use for MIME support?  VM's MIME support is incomplete
(you can't send Japanese in headers, for example), but RFC-compliant
where it available and very easy to configure separately from your
general mimecap.  Gnus uses tm or SEMI, tm is quite complete and
mostly OK, but can be buggy (and absolutely refuses to coexist with
VM); SEMI is still pretty beta, although fairly complete.  I don't
trust either tm or SEMI's RFC conformance, but they're probably close
enough for most people.

    >> -- simple configuration

    Manu> Mew itself is easy to configure and use, at least when you
    Manu> are familiar with Emacs.  But then, learning Emacs is always
    Manu> worhwhile :-)

Does it support the custom interface?  If not, Gnus is far easier to
deal with, and VM (which supports custom partially) may be easier.

Bottom line is I use VM, but among mew, mutt, VM, and Gnus I think
it's really going to matter what your personal usage patterns are.

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