Mail On The emacspeak Audio Desktop

Email On The Emacspeak Audio Desktop

1 Overview

This question comes up every few months on the emacspeak mailing
list. In general, see
Emacspeak Tools to quickly discover available speech-enabled
applications. This article outlines some of the available email setups
given the wide degree of variance in this space.

2 Background

How one puts together an email environment is a function of the
following:

1. How email is retrieved.
2. How email is stored (if storing locally).
3. How email is sent.

Here is an overview of what is available as viewed from the world of
Linux in general and Emacs in particular:

2.1 Email Retrieval

Email can be retrieved in a number of ways:

• IMap via Emacs This is implemented well in GNUS, and poorly in
  Emacs/VM. Note that Emacs is single-threaded, and fetching large
  volumes of email via IMap is painful.
• Batch Retrieval: IMap Tools like fetchmail, offlineimap and friends that live
  outside of Emacs can be used to batch-retrieve email in the
  background. The retrieved mail gets delivered locally as in the past.
• Mail Filtering: UNIX procmail enables filtering of locally
  delivered email into separate folders for automatically organizing
  incoming email.

2.2 Sending Email

Sending email involves:

1. Composing email — typically invoked via key-sequence C-x m
   (command: compose-mail). Emacs email packages implement
   specific versions of this command, e.g. vm-mail from package
   emacs/vm, message-mail from the message package etc.
2. Sending email: This is specific to the email provider being used,
   e.g., GMail. In the past, UNIX machines could talk SMTP to
   the Mail Gateway, but this has mostly disappeared over time. For
   an example of how to configure Emacs to send email via GMail
   using SMTP , see file tvr/gm-smtp.el in the emacspeak repository.

2.3 Local Storage Format

• UNIX Mail: An email folder is a file of messages. This
  format is used by clients like Emacs/VM, UNIX Mail etc.
• Maildir: A mail folder is a directory, with
  individual email messages living in files of their
  own. Sample clients include MH-E (UNIX MH), MU4E.
• RMail This is Emacs' original email format.

3 Putting It All Together

The next sections show my present email setup put together using the
building blocks described above.

1. I use Linux on all my machines, and Android on my phone.
2. I mostly limit email usage on my phone to get a quick overview of email that might require immediate attention — toward this end, I have a to-mobile GMail label that collects urgent messages.
3. Linux is where I handle email in volume.
4. I use my Inbox as

my ToDo list — which means that I leave little or no email in my
Inbox unless I'm on vacation and disconnected from email.

3.1 Desktop: Batch Retrieval And Emacs/VM

This is the email setup on my workstation. See next section for the
email setup while mobile.

1. I batch-retrieve email using fetchmail.
2. This email gets filtered through procmail and auto-filed into
   several folders based on a set of procmail rules. Typical rules
   include separating out various email lists into their respective folders.
3. Note that this does not preclude using IMap via GNUS to read
   email while online.
4. Email that is not filtered into separate folders e.g. email that
   is sent directly to me, email regarding projects that need
   immediate attention etc., land up in folder ~/mbox.
5. So when I launch emacs/vm on my desktop, the above is all I
   need to deal with at any given moment.
6. I typically read Auto-filed mailing lists using emacs/vm about once a day or
   less — I use package mspools to get a quick overview of the
   state of those mail folders.

3.2 Mobile AccessOn Laptop: GNUS And IMap

See gnus-prepare.el for my gnus configuration for accessing GMail
via imap. That configuration is setup to access multiple GMail accounts.

1. I see each GMail label as a separate group in GNUS.
2. I only sync high-priority labels — this works well even
   over slow WIFI connections while on the road. As an example, the
   afore-mentioned to-mobile GMail label is a high-priority group.
3. Module gm-nnir defines a GNUS/GMail extension that enables
   one to search GMail using GMail's search operators — that is my
   prefered means of quickly finding email messages using
   search. This is very fast since the search happens server-side,
   and only email headers are retrieved when displaying the search
   hits.
4. Note that this solution is not laptop/mobile specific — I use
   this setup for searching GMail from my desktop as well.

3.3 Composing And Sending EMail

1. I use compose-mail to compose email.
2. I optionally activate orgtbl-mode and/or orgstruct-mode if
   editing structured content within the email body.
3. I send email out using the setup in gm-smtp.el.

4 Conclusion

1. Email in Linux/Emacs is composed of a set of
   independent building blocks — this gives maximal flexibility.
2. That flexibility allows one to put together different email
   workflows depending on the connectivity environment in use.