On Thursday, June 22, 2006 5:53 PM -0500, Steve Lamb wrote: > Seth Goodman wrote: > > I'd say it's quite a stretch to say that Elm is at the forefront > > of MUA technology. > > But who was talking elm? Last I checked we had references to > mutt and Thunderbird. Both of which do innovative things with mail > and both of which, admittedly, have serious warts.
Here was the reference to my old friend Elm earlier in this thread: On Wednesday, June 21, 2006 8:21 AM -0500, Thibaut Paumard wrote: > <...> > I suppose the reason is: > http://www.unicom.com/pw/reply-to-harmful.html Here's the piece of that article that got me going: " Any reasonable, modern mailer provides this feature. I prefer the Elm mailer. It has separate "r)eply" and "g)roup-reply" commands. If I want to reply to the author of a message, I strike the "r" key. If I want to send a reply to the entire list, I hit "g" instead. Piece 'o cake. I mention Elm here (and a lot later on) simply because that's the mailer I use everyday. This sort of support is not unique to Elm Any reasonable mailer provides it. The Pine mailer, for instance, asks directly, "Reply to all recipients?" when you use the "r" command. It doesn't get much easier than that! " Having used Elm for many years, I feel a bit guilty bashing it. I don't think there's anything wrong with pointing out that it is outdated technology and hardly modern. While it's quite handy if all you have is a terminal screen to a server halfway across your continent, that's no longer the way most people run their desktops. Please, I didn't say no one, just that most use other means. That is particularly true for anyone operating a Winbloze desktop. Non-technical end users don't want to memorize keyboard combinations to drive their MUA. They also don't want to operate their word processors that way and often choose formatted text and HTML email when plain text would do. The horse left the barn on those issues long ago and we're not going to get her back in. If the keyboard shortcut control method was what people wanted, vi and WordPerfect would be the most popular combination around. Those were perfectly functional tools (still are). Though I will probably never forget vi commands 'till the day I die, I often use graphical text editors and word processors, just like today's noobs. I'm not even sure why. It's become a habit. My point is, one size doesn't fit all, and insisting on it won't win us many converts. If we want to see Linux usage increase to any significant degree, it is going to come out of the present pool of Win prisoners. While I can't deny that Mutt on 'doze would solve the list reply problem, most Win detainees either can't (because they have no control over what MUA they use) or choose not to use Mutt (because they don't like dealing with rc files). It's worth noting that Mutt is the MUA on a diminutive proportion of Win desktops. I'd go further to point out that anyone running Mutt on a Win desktop is sufficiently clued in that this discussion doesn't apply to them. Do we really want to erect a perceived barrier to entry into the Linux world? I don't think that's in anyone's best interest other than M$. -- <== broken signature delimiter from brain-dead M$ MUA Seth Goodman Win prisoner #8974372 release date: unclear -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
