On Thu, Feb 04, 2010 at 05:44:08PM -0600, Derek Martin wrote: > On Thu, Feb 04, 2010 at 09:30:51PM +0100, Rado S wrote: > > > As I said, I believe that if you need to have complexity, it > > > should be in the code, not on the user end. > > > > The glue to accomplish complex goals needs not necessarily to be in > > the user end, it can be put in meta-code (wrappers), which can be > > constructed by advanced users to share with other user. See, this > > already happens for mutt. > > And this is exactly the problem. I'm not suggesting that Mutt should > become outlook... I hate outlook. But when you have a requirement > that things that are complex be done outside the app, it means: > > - It's not seamlessly integrated into the user's experience > - Users need to engineer their own solutions > - Invariably, many people re-engineer the same solution many times > > It's a monumental waste of effort. It's generally much, much better > if someone takes the time to integrate the functionality into the > program directly, so that users don't need to keep re-engineering it, > or at least hunting down the solution that someone else engineered.
Derek, Isn't this a problem of packaging, not a problem of architecture or philosophy? Perhaps a Mutt application doesn't ship "complete" from Mutt.org, but you have to assemble Mutt and some ancillary software to produce a useful email application. There is probably a Linux distribution that does that for you. I install Mutt from pkgsrc.org, myself; it seems to come reasonably complete that way, but my application may be different from yours. Dave -- David Young OJC Technologies dyo...@ojctech.com Urbana, IL * (217) 278-3933
