Linux-Emacs as Editor of Wine-Outlook

[SuffersFromOffice]

Hi!

I was once using XP with Outlook 2003 and Windows-Emacs as Editor.
Back then, I was using methods like [1] to send the content of the
current Email message to Emacs in order to get a decent email
editors. This compensated a number of issues I have with Outlook as
a MUA.

Now, I am using Debian GNU/Linux Wheezy with Outlook 2010 with
PlayOnLinux (I am pretty new to Wine/PlayOnLinux).

The methods described on [1] might not work at all because of the
different software contexts - I guess.

Is somebody using GNU/Emacs as an editor for Wine-Outlook?

Has somebody an idea how I can send email content from Wine-Outlook
to Linux-Emacs and back?

Thanks!

1. http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/MsOutlook

[dimesio]

First the POL disclaimer: it's not supported here, their scripts to install Office are wrong, and if you have any problems please reinstall Office in plain Wine following the instructions in the AppDB before asking for help here.

As for your question, I've never heard of anyone using Emacs with Outlook in Wine, and I'm not sure why anyone would bother given the plethora of native Linux email programs to choose from.

But I suppose it could be interesting to try just to see if you can make it work. This section of the FAQ might help: http://wiki.winehq.org/FAQ#head-a2e0e85 ... ebfefa7ce4. If you can't get it to work with native Emacs, try installing Windows Emacs in Wine.

[SuffersFromOffice]

Hi!

First the POL disclaimer: it's not supported here, their scripts to install Office are wrong, and if you have any problems please reinstall Office in plain Wine following the instructions in the AppDB before asking for help here.

Thanks for the disclaimer. I am aware that there are differences
between POL and Wine. However, I assume that the issue I want to
accomplish is completely independent of any POL/Wine differences.

As for your question, I've never heard of anyone using Emacs with Outlook in Wine, and I'm not sure why anyone would bother given the plethora of native Linux email programs to choose from.

Fair enough to question basic assumptions.

Outlook is not only a MUA. It is an interface to a *lot* of groupware
functionality of Microsoft Exchange which most companies depend
on. Sadly.

Outlook Web Access (OWA) offers basic functionality of Outlook in a
web-based interface. However, many interesting features and usability
cookies are available only in Outlook.

Thus, I need Outlook in order to do my tasks.

Besides the fact that Outlook has a horrible editor (and thus limited
editing features) Outlook in Wine/POL has some issues such as losing
characters while typing and so forth.

Thus, I need an alternative Outlook editor to write my emails.

I am heavily using GNU/Emacs on GNU/Linux all day long with a decent
set-up that works mainly on GNU/Linux. Installing and configuring
GNU/Emacs in Wine is not an easy task and I am losing the benefit of
maintaining only one single (Linux) Emacs configuration set-up.

Thus, I want to use GNU/Linux Emacs as editor for my Wine/POL Outlook.

So far for my motivation.

But I suppose it could be interesting to try just to see if you can make it work. This section of the FAQ might help: http://wiki.winehq.org/FAQ#head-a2e0e85 ... ebfefa7ce4. If you can't get it to work with native Emacs, try installing Windows Emacs in Wine.

I am able to invoke Emacs (even emacsclient) from within Outlook on
Wine/POL. The tricky part is to get the email *content* (text) from
Outlook to GNU/Emacs and back.

From Windows Outlook to Windows Emacs there are possibilities (using
VB/TCL, or VB/Python). The question in hence: is there any experience
on how to do the same task with Wine Outlook and Linux Emacs?

Thanks for any pointer!

[dimesio]

Outlook in Wine/POL has some issues such as losing
characters while typing and so forth.

That may well be a POL issue. There are no bug reports or reports in the AppDB of that happening in plain Wine.

[oiaohm]

http://davmail.sourceforge.net/
http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/luc ... ent.1.html
SuffersFromOffice exactly what are you attempting to have emacs access. Most people forget about the existence of openchangeclient Linux native command line tool for accessing exchange servers.

Yes openchangeclient can send and receive emails using the exchange/outlook mapi protocol. Most people miss under exchange you can have more than 1 email client active at a time using mapi. Yes send stuff to outlook via exchange.

SuffersFromOffice

From Windows Outlook to Windows Emacs there are possibilities (using
VB/TCL, or VB/Python). The question in hence: is there any experience
on how to do the same task with Wine Outlook and Linux Emacs?

This path is horible why I am saying check out the davmail bridge and the openchangeclient options. Going Wine running outlook to Linux emacs is going to horible. Wine memory management limits what you can do. The VB TCL or Python inside wine controlling outlook would have to open a pipe file that another section of code in Linux Emacs accesses. For example go look how pipelight project is pull it off to allow silverlight to work in native browsers.

kontact and evolution under Linux are able to also handle so much MAPI stuff directly.

SuffersFromOffice just so you catch up by end of 2014 openchange is planing to be able to replace Exchange server for all versions of outlook. This is why openchangeclient is so good they use it in testing.

There are very limited reasons to be using outlook for what you are talking about. Yes there is no reason why using openchangeclient you could not script up a full emacs MAPI email client without any dependance on Outlook.

[SuffersFromOffice]

http://davmail.sourceforge.net/
http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/luc ... ent.1.html
SuffersFromOffice exactly what are you attempting to have emacs access. Most people forget about the existence of openchangeclient Linux native command line tool for accessing exchange servers.

Originally, I was not writing about an alternative of
Outlook/MAPI/IMAP/... only transferring ASCII-text (or UTF-8) from
Outlook-compose-window to Emacs-new-buffer-window.

Outlook with POL works so far except typing text when composing
emails.

So I was searching for this:

• compose email in Outlook
• in open email window, press magic keyboard shortcut (or button)
• content of the composing email window gets copied to a clipboard (doesn't have to be any specific clipboard - just an transfer/exchange place for my content)
• a new Emacs buffer will be created (everything up to here works so far - except content-copy-to-clipboard)
• the copied email content gets pasted from the clipboard to Emacs
• I can write my email in Emacs
• I save the Emacs buffer and close the buffer
• The content of the Emacs buffer overwrites the content of the Outlook composing window
• I can send my Email from within Outlook

The thing is: I am in a company with over 3000 employees in a
Microsoft dominated universe. For personal reasons I stick with Debian
GNU/Linux. I am a bit into Personal Information Management and have
extremely optimized workflows that need Linux.

So I need to use Outlook in order to be able to access all of our
company-related workflows and stuff.

Yes openchangeclient can send and receive emails using the exchange/outlook mapi protocol. Most people miss under exchange you can have more than 1 email client active at a time using mapi. Yes send stuff to outlook via exchange.

EMail is only a small fraction of the stuff I have to do from within Outlook.

This path is horible why I am saying check out the davmail bridge and the openchangeclient options. Going Wine running outlook to Linux emacs is going to horible. Wine memory management limits what you can do.

Well, Outlook with POL is already running to my satisfaction (except
composing email content). With davmail or openchangeclient (Thanks for
the pointer - I did not know about openchange yet!) I have to start
from scratch and invest hours of hours of playing around until I
probably might not get 100% of current Outlook's featureset.

kontact and evolution under Linux are able to also handle so much MAPI stuff directly.

OK, I might find the time to re-test Evolution one more time. Last
time (approx. 2004) it was a horrible user experience.

SuffersFromOffice just so you catch up by end of 2014 openchange is planing to be able to replace Exchange server for all versions of outlook. This is why openchangeclient is so good they use it in testing.

There are very limited reasons to be using outlook for what you are talking about. Yes there is no reason why using openchangeclient you could not script up a full emacs MAPI email client without any dependance on Outlook.

The main reason is: I have to get 100% of Outlook's functionality with
few to no hours spend on configuring/installing software I never used
before and which might not get me the possibilities I need.

Thanks for the effort! OpenChange went on my (huge) "someday"-list.
However, for now I am looking for a low(er) hanging fruit only.