On Fri, Jan 04, 2002 at 09:36:17PM +0100, Roman Neuhauser <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: | > On Fri, Jan 04, 2002 at 08:29:55PM +0100, Roman Neuhauser wrote: | > > as pointed out by others, you made a good choice with getmail over | > > fetchmail, since the latter breaks the unix philosophy "do one | > > thing, but do it right". | > | > What? fetchmail only does one thing. It downloads mail and injects it | > into the local mail system. [..] | > I really don't care what program you use. But really is it necessary to | > belittle someone elses tool in the process? | | I think I forgot to attach ":)" to that sentence. That said, I _do_ | think that fetchmail has gone the Windows "I can do it all for ya, | pal" way, which is not what I like. | | Let me put it this way: how would you label fetchmail? what is its | job? is it to talk SSL, talk SMTP (great if you need to get rid of | some messages in endless loops and similar stuff), filter spam, or | is it to talk POP, and write the messages to /dev/null, disk or | another program's stdin?
I'd still characterise it as above "It downloads mail from a remote mail system and injects it into the local mail system." It speaks a few fetch protocols (pop, imap) and two delivery methods (smtp and to a delivery program). It knows how to deal with several buggy service implementations. But it does only one thing, and quite well. Getmail speaks only pop and has filtering to boot - looks less functional and more bloated at the same time! If you're collecting from a sane and conformant POP server getmail will work just fine. But fetchmail does do just one thing, and it does do it well. -- Cameron Simpson, DoD#743 [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.zip.com.au/~cs/ The BMW context is similar. Maybe the Germans started it, I remember my '60s R60s having spring-loaded stands. Perhaps this is the ideal compromise - when it's new, and you're afraid to let it out of your hands in case it attacks a taxi or rubbishes a crowd of drunken hoons, the stand springs up at every opportunity and locks into place with a satisfying clang... but after a few storms, dirt roads, road grime (quite a few of course), the pivot wears unevenly, and with the passage of time the stand relaxes and becomes choosy about when it will come up. Eventually it won't come up at all - it happens to everyone in time - but by then the stand is so familiar that you don't even need to look any more, to put it down or pick it up (surface permitting). This is the peak of motorcycling pleasure - the rider is one with the sidestand. - Gary Woodman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
