Emacs for Fastmail

[mlewin]

Hi all,

I've set myself a challenge of learning Emacs, so I'm trying to 'live' in Emacs for the next few weeks to see if I can get the hang of it.

One thing I'm struggling with is email. I know there are a bunch of different options: RMail, VM, Wanderlust, Gnus .... and I wondered if any other Fastmail users could recommend a solution, and perhaps share config settings too.

I use Fastmail to host a couple of domains, so I'd like to be able to send email from a particular domain (as per the Fastmail 'personalities' feature). Is this easy (or even possible) to set up in Emacs?

Thanks in advance!
Mark

[janusz]

The only IT-related Emacs I know of is a text editor. What this has to do with email? Is there another computer beast called Emacs??

[David]

You can for sure read and send email with Emacs + pretty well anything else you need to do. More info here and here.

[janusz]

Originally Posted by David

You can for sure read and send email with Emacs

Thanks for enlightening me
But why anybody would want to do that??

[crunch]

Originally Posted by janusz

But why anybody would want to do that??

Emacs is one of the most powerful editors on the planet.

When your email is tightly integrated with such a powerful editor, all the power of that editor can be brought to bear on reading, editing, and managing email, and on transferring information to/from email.

Emacs is also incredibly flexible, and can be configured and hacked to the nth degree, allowing you to make the interface you use it through and what it does perfectly fit your needs.

To expand on these points a bit, tight integration between an email client and your editor means that you don't have to launch and external editor in order to edit email. All the editing features of emacs (and there are thousands of them) are at your fingertips immediately as you begin to edit your email -- no mucking with external popup windows, no need to switch to another window or desktop, and no need to be limited to some barebones, crippled web browser editor or dedicated email client editor.

Likewise, when you're editing some other document, all the information from email tightly integrated through an email package in emacs is available in a way that would be clumsy at best were you to use a seperate email client. When you use emacs, you could have email tightly integrated with not just editing but also organizing, to-do list management, presentations, databases, bookmarks, etc -- all available inside emacs.

Emacs has often been described as more of an operating system than an editor. So it might make more sense to think of this as wanting to integrate email in to an operating system rather than integrating it in to a typical editor.

Now a word on emacs customization: By customizing and hacking emacs, you can make it do what you want how you want it. You don't have to settle for the features the authors of dedicated email clients or web browsing interfaces chose for you.

Of course, many people don't really feel the need for such power. If you don't read many emails, or don't do anything particularly special with them, and are happy with the interface provided by your dedicated email client or web interface, then you might find emacs integration to be a bit overkill. Also, if you don't feel comfortable programming, then you're going to get a lot less out of emacs than you could.

So emacs is not for everyone. It's more for the power user who wants the ultimate in flexibility, customizability, programmability, and sheer power.

[David]

Originally Posted by janusz

Thanks for enlightening me
But why anybody would want to do that??

I tried doing what the OP is now trying to do, quite a few years ago now. After a several week learning process I did actually succeed.

If you are prepared to spend many long hours learning Emacs you can pretty well do anything, without ever leaving it. Speaking only for myself I gave it up after just a short time. So, in answer to your question, I just don't know - perhaps to challenge yourself (and to overcome

[crunch]

Originally Posted by mlewin

Hi all,

I've set myself a challenge of learning Emacs, so I'm trying to 'live' in Emacs for the next few weeks to see if I can get the hang of it.

One thing I'm struggling with is email. I know there are a bunch of different options: RMail, VM, Wanderlust, Gnus .... and I wondered if any other Fastmail users could recommend a solution, and perhaps share config settings too.

I use Fastmail to host a couple of domains, so I'd like to be able to send email from a particular domain (as per the Fastmail 'personalities' feature). Is this easy (or even possible) to set up in Emacs?

Thanks in advance!
Mark

I haven't done this myself yet, but it should be possible to do by using IMAP to access Fastmail from the emacs mail client of your choice.

[David]

I would like to add that after spending many hours learning Emacs and trying to do all my work without ever leaving it, I found that it was taking me twice as long to get my work done. YMMV.

[janusz]

Originally Posted by crunch

using IMAP to access Fastmail from the emacs mail client of your choice.

Have fun
As long as this isn't compulsory

[rahulbatra]

I used to use Gnus a couple of years back to check Fastmail over IMAP. It was pretty smooth. I don't remember much of the config but it was nothing out of the ordinary.

RMail doesn't do IMAP (or atleast not how it should be done). No idea about the other modes like Wanderlust. My recommendation would be to use Gnus and integrate BBDB for contacts. Worked like a charm.

[David]

Mutt does IMAP (very very well) and is easy to use, once you learn the key mappings.

[delexi]

I am using Gnus at the moment with a couple of IMAP accounts. These accounts are not freemail accounts, but that should not be a problem.

I use isync or mbsync (they changed the name for some reason) to sync my mailbox to my local harddrive in the maildir format and then use Gnus' nnmaildir backend to simply read the mail from there. There is even a little mbsync emacs mode floating around somewhere on github that lets you start a sync from within emacs simply by the press of a button.

This setup also allows for convenient offline mail-related work.

Regards,
Alex

[che]

Originally Posted by rahulbatra

No idea about the other modes like Wanderlust. My recommendation would be to use Gnus and integrate BBDB for contacts. Worked like a charm.

Yes, Wanderlust supports IMAP4 and POP3 and I prefer it over Gnus because the latter is awfully slow (especially with large folders). But WL can be a bit tricky to setup.