On Thu, 6 Mar 2003 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> On Wed, 2003-03-05 at 20:41, Tzafrir Cohen wrote:
> > On Wed, 5 Mar 2003, Vadim Vygonets wrote:
> >
> > > Quoth [EMAIL PROTECTED] on Tue, Mar 04, 2003:
> > > > You remind me what I knew about using Windows before I arrived to my
> > > > current workplace. Outlook is not just a mail client but a (convenient!
> > > > IMHO) address book + calendar + notes + mail organizer. You can say they
> > > > don't belong together but the fact is that the integration is VERY
> > > > convenient.
> > >
> > > Seen it. Not so convenient, and *really* doesn't belong
> > > together. Nor do I see the point of having a mailer inside your
> > > browser.
> >
> > This is a work around a *problem* of the system/UI.
> >
> > On my system I simply:
> >
> > cat file [|possible pipe] | {mail|mutt} whatever
> >
> > cat file [|possible pipe] | lpr
>
> And you think it's more convenient than pressing the "Print" button?
> I've been there and moved on.
>
> (BTW, "cat file | program" is the most naive beginner mistake, if it's
> only one file then you can run "program < file", RTFM :-).
I'm used to "cat file |program", thank you.
That way it is much easier for me to add things in the pie, and to build
it incrementally, when needed.
As for the overhead of an extra cat: I can afford it.
"lpr" does a lot more ations. The extra "cat" is negligble.
If the cat is in a loop, it may be worth optimizin it away. But my typing
time also counts.
>
> >
> > Mozilla, Explorer, and such are limited. They can't easily pipe their
> > output. So they need to be bloated with all that functionality.
> >
> > They need all that functionality embedded inside them.
> >
>
> I disagree about your conclusion. Just like pipes can be used to move
> streams of bytes between programs (unidirectionally!) so can
> remote-procedure-calls be used to call "plug-ins" from "main" programs
> (bidirectionally!).
So let's examine what you can do with kmail/evolution and what you can do
with mutt and minimal helper scripts.
>
> I used, managed and programmed UNIX since 1986 until 2000. I still
> like the power of scripting and such. But when it gets down to reading,
> e.g., this very mailing list I find it much more convenient to click
> buttons and have the right viewer used automatically embedded in my mail
> window as well as the textual data in the right encoding than start
> typing " " or "^X" and "Enter" and god knows what in a limited 80x40
> text-only screen.
The fact is that nither kmail nor evolution provides me a powerful
command-line like vi, emacs and mutt. This means that I am basically
limited to the usage scenarios of the original designers. (pine misses suc
a feature as well).
Can you use ldap with kmail? Can you print Hebrew with mozilla? Can you
use NIS users list with either of those?
Can you work around their limitations?
Is there a program without limitations?
Is feature-bloat the only way around limitations?
> I also like the ability to click a URL and have the
> browser popped-up instead of having to copy-paste the address.
mutt, pine, and virtually and other decent non-html mail/news reader
supports launching a browser from links in the content of the message.
>
> If MS are so wrong about their integration stuff (I'm not familiar with
> MS jargon, but I think it's about COM and its descendants) then how come
> GNOME and KDE invest so much in imitating this and Linux sites keep
> showing off screen shots of these environments? (one claim against them
> is that they stole good ideas and implemented them very badly, but still
> I find their interface today more convenient to some tasks than the
> ASCII-alone world of pipes and command line).
>
> This elitist view that "if it's good enough for grandma then it's not
> good enough for me" looks simply pathetic to me.
But it's not. I've tried it. And it is *not* good enough for me. Whether
or not grandma likes it is irrelevant.
>
> Just today someone who works on Mac OS X told me she has a great user
> interface but underneath it she can always open a tcsh window and start
> typing away (she's has a 2nd degree in CS from HUJI so she feels
> comfortable with tcsh).
The analogy here would be "I've got a great mailer, but I can always pipe
messages to a command". Not.
Why doesn't any graphical mailer come with an equivalent to the "bounce"
of pine and mutt?
>
> UNIX command line tools are great for some jobs, but the computer world
> haven't frozen 30 years ago when these concepts where first invented.
So have unix tools
>
> The UNIX command line interface was invented within the limitations of
> the hardware and software technologies of the time, these limitations
> have been lifted long ago. I don't see the point of making this
> interface sacred just because two decades ago only geeks could use it.
The current terminal is far better than a terminal of the beginning of the
seventies. An xterm is resizable, and provides much better capabilities.
Many "standards" have evolved on the environment in which it will run.
But still, a terminal can be run from varying environments. This "can"
certainly apples to where I run the terminals and read mail from.
--
Tzafrir Cohen
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.technion.ac.il/~tzafrir
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