[VM] Emacs for email: Rmail v VM v Gnus

[Uday Reddy]

If you want to use emacs and keep your mail on the server, you
probably want to look into Wanderlust. Gnus can do it also [...]
If you don't mind moving to keep your email locally, your options
expand quite a bit. In addition to Gnus, you can try rmail, mh-e, and
VM.

I would like to correct the impression that VM is a local folder mail
client. Starting with version 8.1.0 (released in March 2010), VM has had
full support for IMAP. Quoting from the release notes for 8.1.0:

MAJOR NEW FEATURES:

* Support for reading and replying to messages in HTML.

* Full support for IMAP servers. (See "IMPROVEMENTS for
imap-folders".)

I should also add that VM is very similar to Rmail in its basic structure,
but extends Rmail with full support for MIME and POP/IMAP servers. It also
has a very powerful virtual folder facility. (VM was in fact the inventor
of the "virtual folder" concept). Virtual folders are extremely useful when
you have to deal with large quantities of email, with multiple mail folders
etc.

You can find the public releases of VM here:

http://download.savannah.gnu.org/releases/viewmail/

and the development versions here:

http://launchpad.net/vm

Cheers,
Uday

[James Freer]

Post by Uday Reddy

If you want to use emacs and keep your mail on the server, you
probably want to look into Wanderlust. Gnus can do it also [...]
If you don't mind moving to keep your email locally, your options
expand quite a bit. In addition to Gnus, you can try rmail, mh-e, and
VM.

I would like to correct the impression that VM is a local folder mail
client. Starting with version 8.1.0 (released in March 2010), VM has had
* Support for reading and replying to messages in HTML.
* Full support for IMAP servers. (See "IMPROVEMENTS for
imap-folders".)
I should also add that VM is very similar to Rmail in its basic structure,
but extends Rmail with full support for MIME and POP/IMAP servers. It also
has a very powerful virtual folder facility. (VM was in fact the inventor
of the "virtual folder" concept). Virtual folders are extremely useful when
you have to deal with large quantities of email, with multiple mail folders
etc.
http://download.savannah.gnu.org/releases/viewmail/
http://launchpad.net/vm
Cheers,
Uday

As VM isn't part of gnu-emacs why has Rmail not been developed. There
was a discussion thread a while back on how emacs could be improved.
Emacs is "complete working environment" but for email for IMAP and
virtual folders one has to turn to another app. Xemacs i believe has
VM installed with it. Why not use Xemacs? well i found it fairly poor
compared with gnu-emacs [well it doesn't seem to have been compiled
properly for use on ubuntu somehow.]

james