Wrote Mikko Hänninen on Tue, Feb 29, 2000 at 09:34:37PM +0200:
> This would probably benefit from having more explanation of the mail
> sending process in the Mutt docs. I don't agree that Mutt should give
> specific pointers to sendmail documentation, because even though
> sendmail is the currently most prominent MTA, it's by far not the only
> one. And Mutt documentation should be about using Mutt, not about how
> to configure any number of other MTA programs... But, explaining the
> process clearly and then saying that for help configuring the MTA you
> should refer to the documentation about that MTA is probably the right
> thing to do.
Sure, keep the software modular, but that doesn't mean you have to have
really mean documentation. As sendmail is the default with all
distributions I can think of, include links for it and for qmail and
Postfix and you should be about done. People running other MTAs will
probably already know how to do it.
> If you ask me, I wouldn't use sendmail as a newbie's MTA, the beast is
> not for the faint at heart.
And the ironic thing is that sendmail is pretty much the newbie's MTA.
Think how many RedHat installs are running sendmail without the user
knowing what it is..
But that's no reason to not explain things better. If I read less
"sendmail is extremely complex" and "it is very difficult to get a hold
of" and more actual sendmail documentation I'm sure it wouldn't seem so
complex.
[..]
> > There are way too many options in the sample config file.
> > At least the standard ones which users might like to change should be
> > put at the top of the file and the more esoteric below that.
>
> There are some really good example .muttrc-files on the web (Telsa's
> example comes to mind *grin*). You can find links to these on the Mutt
> web page. However, I don't think the documentation even tells that
> there are more (and better) examples available on the website, so unless
> the user thinks for themselves to look there, they're left with the
> default example .muttrc. I'm not sure, but it can be that anyone has
> put significant effort into that file.
I did actually read a number of these (Telsa's was first), but they are
very long files to try and fit into your head. I'd much prefer lots of
those settings to also be settable within the interface where I actually
want the change rather than reading a config file.
Regards,
Chuck
