Re: isync vs mailsync

[Brian Nelson <nelson@bignachos.com>]

Brian May <bam@debian.org> writes:

> >>>>> "Colin" == Colin Walters <walters@verbum.org> writes:
> 
>     Colin> Brian May <bam@debian.org> writes:
>     >> In my search for a "perfect" offline IMAP client(TM) I have
>     >> looked at isync vs mailsync.
> 
>     Colin> What's wrong with Gnus?  Perhaps with the Agent?  I admit
>     Colin> I've never tried disconnected IMAP with it, but I see
>     Colin> people talking about it on the ding lists.
> 
> Gnus seems to be slow and inefficient. In online mode, it doesn't seem
> to cache anything for any reason, so just reading a message you read
> seconds ago requires downloading it again. It also means that messages
> need to be downloaded again for offline reading.

There's a whole ton of caching options in gnus, but I haven't yet
figured out how they work.

> However, the real killer, was that I could not get offline reading to
> work with IMAP, only NNTP. Perhaps I was doing something wrong, not
> sure here. At the time I took the easy way out and concluded that IMAP
> wasn't supported <grin>.

Works fine here (gnus 5.8.8)

> Despite these problems, Gnus is the only program I have seen that will
> highlight replies to my mail, something I find very valuable in large
> mailing lists like this one.
> 
> Another alternative that looked good last time I tried was Mozilla, as
> it seems to have very good off-line mail support. However, it was
> buggy and often refused to enter mail groups for no good reason, so I
> gave up on that. Eventually I will have to try it again.

Offline downloading for me in Mozilla broke in 0.9.3, and I've heard
mail is/has been completely broken in cvs recently.

I've tried almost all the options mentioned in this thread (mutt +
mailsync, mozilla, gnus) and have settled on gnus.  It's really nice
once you get it to behave.

-- 
Brian Nelson <nelson@bignachos.com>