Alternatives to VM for mail

[Tim Cross <tcross@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi All,

I was just wondering if anyone is using either gnus or mew for reading
mail under emacs and emacspeak? The reason I am asking is that I've
been having some problems with VMs ability to read some MIME messages
correctly. The author of VM, Kyle Jones, doesn't seem to be supporting
VM anymore and I thought I'd have a look around to see what other
alternatives exist. 

At this stage, my choice is between gnus and mew. Some time ago (years
in fact) I tried out gnus for mail. I use it regularly for newsgroups,
but had some issues with it as a mail reader when I last tried it out
about 8 years ago. Therefore, I thought I'd try out mew.

There is an emacspeak-mew.el file in the list/lang/ja branch of
emacspeak, but it doesn't look like it is being actively maintained.
For example, it looks like it still has the old style of voice locking
code etc. 

I've put together a very rough emacspeak-mew.el file of my own which
essentially just provides voice support for things like reading the
summary line when you move around in the summary buffer, speaking the
messages buffer and a few other small additions to make it usable.
There is a way to go before it would be as voice friendly as VM, but
the results so far are quite encouraging. I've also found mew is able
to access the MIME messages I was not able to access correctly with
VM. 

Anyway, before going too far down my own emacspeak-mew.el file, I
thought I'd check to see if anyone else has been working on this or
has a more up-to-date version than the one bundled with emacspeak. 

Tim

P.S. For anyone interested, the main MIME problem I have had with VM
has been in accessing messages with attachments sent from apple mail.
These messages are a little "odd" in their format, but from what I've
been finding out, they do appear to be "legal". The problem appears to
be that apple mail embeds the attachment within an HTML part to the
message and therefore the attachment is at the same level as the HTML
part. Since I have VM configured to show plain text when that
alternative is available, you don't see the attachment. Unfortunately,
hitting D does not show it either or provide a button to access it. 

I have found that gmail, mutt and mew are all able to access the
attachment fine. I've also observed this problem from multiple users
who have sent me attachments from an apple mail client, so its
unlikely to be a config issue with the sender. 

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe from the emacspeak list or change your address on the
emacspeak list send mail to "emacspeak-request@xxxxxxxxxxx" with a
subject of "unsubscribe" or "help"