Wednesday
20Sep2006
No gnus is bad gnus
Wednesday, September 20, 2006 at 3:20PM
As an addendum to my post about [Keeping track of mailing lists](/2006/09/19/keeping-track-of-mailing-lists/), despite everybody's suggestions about using Gmail, I've decided to try using [Gnus](http://gnus.org/) in [XEmacs](http://www.xemacs.org/) again. Last night, I built 21.5.26 with [Andrew Choi's carbon patches](http://members.shaw.ca/akochoi-xemacs/), installed the latest sumo packages and tried it out.
My fingers strangely still remember a number of the shortcuts, so it wasn't an altogether painful experience. In fact, my fingers still remember a bunch of the stuff I'd set up myself, that I miss, so I'm now digging through my subversion-backed home directory's history to find my old gnus configuration.
I feel it helps to have a separate application for mailing lists, because it is very much a separate task (or context?) to reading email. It's something I only want to do once or twice a day, when I've got a little downtime or am looking for a distraction.
Incidentally, I previously [built a binary for XEmacs](/2005/08/04/build-of-carbon-xemacs-21520-beta-2-for-mac-os-x-104/) and now that I'm using it again, I'd be happy to knock a more up to date one together if there was any demand for such a thing?
One other thing. I don't suppose anybody around here still happens to run a usenet news server these days? I'd like access to `comp.lang.ruby` and I'd quite like to reacquaint myself with another couple of groups I used to hang around in...
**update** And this is why one keeps one's home directory in subversion:
mathie@Lagavulin:mathie$ svn log -v|less
to discover in which revision I removed the XEmacs configuration, then:
mathie@Lagavulin:mathie$ svn merge -r1358:1357 .
and it restores all my config. OK, so there are a couple of conflicts to resolve, but that was really quite painless. :-)
My fingers strangely still remember a number of the shortcuts, so it wasn't an altogether painful experience. In fact, my fingers still remember a bunch of the stuff I'd set up myself, that I miss, so I'm now digging through my subversion-backed home directory's history to find my old gnus configuration.
I feel it helps to have a separate application for mailing lists, because it is very much a separate task (or context?) to reading email. It's something I only want to do once or twice a day, when I've got a little downtime or am looking for a distraction.
Incidentally, I previously [built a binary for XEmacs](/2005/08/04/build-of-carbon-xemacs-21520-beta-2-for-mac-os-x-104/) and now that I'm using it again, I'd be happy to knock a more up to date one together if there was any demand for such a thing?
One other thing. I don't suppose anybody around here still happens to run a usenet news server these days? I'd like access to `comp.lang.ruby` and I'd quite like to reacquaint myself with another couple of groups I used to hang around in...
**update** And this is why one keeps one's home directory in subversion:
mathie@Lagavulin:mathie$ svn log -v|less
to discover in which revision I removed the XEmacs configuration, then:
mathie@Lagavulin:mathie$ svn merge -r1358:1357 .
and it restores all my config. OK, so there are a couple of conflicts to resolve, but that was really quite painless. :-)
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Reader Comments (3)
Another alternative for emacs on the mac is Aquamacs (http://aquamacs.org/) It's a kind of frankensteinesque program that's pat mac and part emacs. Seems to suit my muscle memory well.
Boyd: From your recommendation, I gave it a quick shot. It does just feel, well, wrong. My muscle memory seems to be able to do one or t'other, but not mix both. I had the following conversation with zippy:
> hello
>
> > How do you do? What brings you to see me?
>
> I don't think I really like aquamacs.
>
> > Why do you say you do not think you really like aquamacs?
>
> It feels, well, wrong.
>
> > Is it because of your plans that you say it feels well wrong?
>
> Well, my main reason for investigating it was to run Gnus, but there have been so many things that jarred so far (C-j didn't execute a line of elisp in the scratch buffer for example) that I don't think I can continue to use it.
>
> > Is it because there have been so many things that jarred so far c j didn't execute a line of elisp in the scratch buffer for example that you do not think you can continue to use it that you came to me?
>
> Well, yes. I was looking at the help menu and I thought that some psychoanalysis might help.
>
> > Does it bother you that some psychoanalysis might help?
>
> No, not really, because I don't think it will.
>
> > When did you first know that you do not think it will?
>
> About two sentences ago when you misparsed C-j...
>
> > What happened when I misparsed c j?
>
> You gave away the fact that you're not quite like all the other \*macs.
>
> > Is the fact that I am not quite like all the other \*macs the real reason?
>
> Oh, yes. You just somehow feel wrong. Like the bastard lovechild of Mac OS X and Emacs. I bet you'll disappear when I do apple-w instead of C-x k...
>
> > What would happen if you do apple w instead of c x k?
>
> You'll die, die for ever and be eternally wiped from my hard drive! Mwuahahaha!
>
> > This is not a healthy way of thinking.
>
> Buh-byee. :-)
i liked this!
(Scratch buffers in Aquamacs are in text-mode by default because I expect that its users will mostly write something contentful rather than keeping themselves busy hacking elisp.
M-x lisp-interaction-mode would have solved your problem!