Quoting mutt-users-digest <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > Date: Wed, 21 Jul 1999 21:40:15 -0500 > From: Jeremy Blosser <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Subject: Re: Email client poll > > I'm curious what benefit you think there is in a menu system over just a > well-annotated .muttrc? Presumably what a menu system would do is let you > see what each variable does (theoretically using the manual entry for it so > we stay consistent) and then let you set the value you want. A .muttrc > annotated with the manual entries does the same thing and is > viewable/useful on any platform that has any text editor. If you want to > group options together in some way to make it easier to find what you're > looking for you can do it just as well in a text file as with menus, IMHO. > But maybe I'm missing something. > Well, I think Cheryl's comments say a lot. There are users out there who could really use the features that Mutt offers, but aren't at the level where they feel comfortable diving into things. At the risk of sounding egotistical, I'm about as "power-user" as they come, but if there's a piece of software I'm considering trying out, but don't necessarily need, and the configuration process just looks like a big, old mess that will take way too long to wade through just to get going, I may be inclined to either wait until some other time (if it ever comes), or just skip it altogether. Of course, in my case it's more a matter of my not having a lot of time for such things. The menu system may seems like a glorified version of an annotated .muttrc, but I'd say it would be an improvement. A .muttrc with just a single line (occasionally two) about each option is a pretty good start, but there are times when you need more, especially when you're just getting started. Sure, you could put longer descriptions on, but with all those options, it could get out of control, and you could probably end up just stuffing the entirety of Chapter 6 right into a .muttrc. A menu system could allow you to select an item, then pop up more detailed information about it. Have you ever seen or used the menu-config option for configuring a Linux kernel? It's a really nice way to go. I can go through it, check every option to determine how I want the kernel configured, and if I need more information on an option, there is a paragraph or two at the touch of a key. If I need even more information on a complicated option, there is usually a pointer to additional documentation. And as Cheryl said, it's just a friendlier face. There would even be the potential, down the road, for "interactive" tools for things like assembling format strings with some sort of "palette" of the escape sequences you can use, and a sample of what the finished product would look like. We could even have a tool that would simulate the various screens of mutt to allow the user to interactively choose colors with ease. These are things that have (or probably have, anyway) been suggested, but the developers wouldn't want to bloat mutt out with. Here's the perfect compromise! I'd just like to conclude by saying that I think this is a tool which could be put together fairly easily, and could reduce or eliminate what could well be a major hurdle to more people using Mutt. However, I think it would be a mistake to spend much energy on a GUI version of this. Let's face it, if a person wants a GUI, why are they using Mutt? Something like Dialog presents a very pleasant, functional interface without the need for a GUI. It will run just about anywhere (as long as the person has a decent terminal to access it with) on just about anything. I personally use Mutt on a headless Linux box located on the other side of town from me. If I were to use a GUI tool, I'd have to either run it on my local machine, and copy my .muttrc back and forth whenever I need to change something, or I'd have to run the tool on that machine via X Windows. Not only would this be a royal pain because of a less-than-speedy modem connection, but I'd have to do something silly like running an X server when I'm on my Windoze machine at the office. Blech! For our next topic... Is there a way to get in and manually edit MIME headers for sections of a message? For instance, this would allow me to set "extra" information for the Content-Type, such as "charset" for a text/plain portion. And our last topic... Okay, so much for the grab bag idea... after that huge (sorry, everyone) diatribe on the configuration tool, I can't remember what else I was going to write about... *sigh* -Brandon :)
