

Gmail vs Pine - njn
http://snarfed.org/space/gmail_vs_pine

======
pierrefar
"If no email is selected, the Y key should archive the email under the cursor.
This should be common sense." Nope, bad idea. I inadvertently hit keys often
enough that the message "No messages are selected" is engraved in my brain.
Don't make these bad key hits do actions.

------
snprbob86
If you click the little blue arrow in the top-right corner of an individual
message, there is a "Filter messages like this" option. It has been there for
quite some time. Also, marking a message as read is "<shift> \+ i".

~~~
dailo10
You can also select messages that aren't on the screen. You click "Select:
All" and then "Select all conversations that match this search".

------
1amzave
Decent critique of Gmail, but the title seems a bit of a misnomer -- it really
seems like an article about Gmail, with a few mentions of Pine thrown in.
Given that it's presented as "X vs. Y", I would have at least expected the
"Bad" and "Ugly" sections to have some comparison showing how Pine was better
in those regards.

------
tumult
I actually use Gnus and Mutt with my Gmail accounts, via the offlineimap
<http://github.com/jgoerzen/offlineimap> Python app. It creates a
(ridiculously huge) maildir and then I can freely browse it with Gnus, Mutt or
any other MUA. It syncs read/unread, labels/folders, etc. both directions. It
has filtering, renaming, and other nice stuff you can put between your
maildirs and Gmail accounts.

I run it on a cronjob. With this setup, I get the great Gmail interface (and
push support to my iPhone/Nexus One) when I'm on the go, and the lightning-
fast Gnus/Mutt interfaces for blazing through mailing lists when I'm at a
computer.

One problem is that sometimes offlineimap throws exceptions and doesn't finish
a sync. I think it needs some touching up or updating. I haven't lost any
data, though.

~~~
avar
Would you mind posting your offlineimap and Gnus configuration (sans
passwords) somewhere. I've had a few false starts with Gnus and always get
lost customizing something. Maybe there's a nice tutorial for this somewhere?

~~~
d0mine

      ;; Gnus
      ;; . http://jfm3-repl.blogspot.com/2007_12_01_archive.html
      (setq mail-user-agent 'gnus-user-agent)	     ; always use gnus for email
      (setq message-send-mail-partially-limit nil) ; never split messages
      (setq message-signature nil)		     ; no .signature
      (add-hook 'message-send-hook 'ispell-message) ; spell check on sent
    
      ;; . encrypt .authinfo file
      (require 'epa-file)
      (epa-file-enable)
      (setq epa-file-cache-passphrase-for-symmetric-encryption t)
      ;; .  define mail/news sources
      (setq gnus-select-method '(nnnil "")
          gnus-secondary-select-methods
            '(
    	  (nnml "")
    	  ;; to add rss: type G R in *Group* buffer; when asked, paste url
    	  (nnimap "gmail"
    		  (nnimap-authinfo-file "/path/to/.authinfo.gpg")
    		  (nnimap-address "imap.gmail.com")
    		  (nnimap-server-port 993)
    		  (nnimap-stream ssl))
    	  ))
      ;; Accessing the [Gmail] folders http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/GnusGmail
      (setq gnus-invalid-group-regexp "[:`'\"]\\|^$")
      (setq gnus-ignored-newsgroups "")
      ;; After that, S s to the groups as specified above. Before doing
      ;; anything else, G c configure each Gmail line, and hit [done]. Gnus
      ;; will pick up “another” group, this time without the nnimap+gmail
      ;; designator. C-k the old group and it works! (I don’t know why; I
      ;; originally wanted gcc-self “nnimap+gmail:[Gmail]/Sent Mail” on
      ;; INBOX and this was the easiest way to arrange that. Magically, it
      ;; picked up the new INBOX and everything worked, even across
      ;; sessions.)
    
      ;; . save sent items
      (setq gnus-message-archive-method '(nnimap "gmail"))
      (setq gnus-message-archive-group "nnimap+gmail:[Gmail]/Sent Mail")
      (setq gnus-gcc-mark-as-read t) 
      ;; .
      (setq gnus-thread-sort-functions
          '(gnus-thread-sort-by-number
            gnus-thread-sort-by-date
            gnus-thread-sort-by-total-score))
      (setq gnus-summary-line-format
          "%U%R%z %d %I%(%[%-25,25n%]%) %s\n")

------
greyman
The single reason that I choose gmail over desktop clients are the
conversations - the ability to see all email _bodies_ of one email exchange in
a single page is indispensable for me. Another smaller reason is a search. If
some desktop client would implement conversations (but by displaying email
bodies, not only headers like Outlook or Thunderbird do), I would probably
switch.

------
cptnred
How old is this article? It says April 2010 at the top, but most the comments
are from 2005-2006.

~~~
njn
I think it's from 2005. The Gmail logo he uses still says 'beta', and he links
to this blog entry from 2005: <http://www.zeldman.com/daily/0405d.shtml>

~~~
ErrantX
The last releases of Pine appear to be in '05 too.

~~~
bediger
Univ of Washington switched to an Apache License, and started calling it
"alpine". Last release appears to have been in August 2008:
<http://www.washington.edu/alpine/changes.html>

------
logic
It's interesting that so many of his issues still apply.

My personal beef: have you ever had a message mis-identified as part of a
conversation? Or, ever had someone reply to a message with a slightly mangled
subject line or other hint to GMail that it's a separate discussion?

I will declare my undying appreciation for anyone who tells my how to manually
separate a message from (and alternatively, attach a message to) a
conversation.

The inability to "bounce", ie. re-send, was also very jarring for my personal
workflow. I understand why it's not there by default, both from a user
understanding perspective and from a technical "don't break SPF/DKIM" one, but
it's unbelievably annoying not being able to "bounce" a message from account
to another (ie. from an apps account to a gmail.com account, for example).

I'm surprised to see so many people who are happy with Gmail's labeling;
conceptually, tagging email is fantastic, but the UI experience in Gmail is
awful. (Too much friction is involved. When I sit down to label something I
don't want to select one or two from a drop-down, I want to just type a series
of applicable tags in one shot, perhaps with a bit of ajax auto-fill-in. With
so many other nods to keyboardists elsewhere, this still surprises me.)

Not that complaining about this stuff on HN will address any of it for me. ;)

------
frossie
I got to agree about the lack of "bounce" - I could never move my work email
to gmail for that reason alone (not to mention my preference of writing emails
in my native editor).

~~~
mseebach
I was a little confused by this one - what's the usecase for manually bouncing
mail?

~~~
frossie
Sorry, "bounce" is the command for "Resend mail" (not rejecting email) in a
lot of unix mailers. Say A sends an email to B who sends it to C.

If B forwards it to C, the email appears to come from B. If B "bounces" it to
C, the email appears to come from A.

(it's the Resent-to header in RFC 822 IIRC)

So say you get a bug report from A than you know only C can fix, by bouncing
it to them they get to easily reply directly to A and get on with it, leaving
you out of it...

------
staticshock
And there is room for improvement in gmail yet. I've always been incredibly
frustrated by gmail's inability to forward complete conversations. Here they
are, all together. And now I can forward them to someone, one at a time, or I
can... do what? Go to "print", copy the HTML output back into an email?

~~~
gwern
Actually, isn't there a 'forward all' option now? I know I've used it several
times.

~~~
staticshock
Oh, thank you, I haven't realized that they added this!

------
rue
Old as the article may be, if anyone is interested: <http://sup.rubyforge.org>
is a gmail-inspired command-line mail client. Threading, tagging, full-text
search, hooks etc.

~~~
itgoon
And it has one of the best IMAP-centric rants, ever:

<http://sup.rubyforge.org/svn/trunk/lib/sup/imap.rb>

"fucking imap fucking sucks. what the FUCK kind of committee of dunces
designed this shit."

Classic.

------
gluegadget
Using Labs "Mark as Read Button" will reduce the steps required to mark
messages as read to two steps (mentioned as the first in ugly)

~~~
hazzen
Alternatively, you can type <period><down><enter>. Period opens the "more
actions" menu and you can then use arrows/enter to navigate the menu.

~~~
agentq
Even better, just hit Shift+I ...

------
prasanamishra
the last thing I need switching from gmail to pine :)

