On Thu, Feb 04, 2010 at 09:50:02PM -0600, David Young wrote: > Isn't this a problem of packaging, not a problem of architecture > or philosophy?
It should be evident from the large amount of traffic on this list that it is not. If you've been here long enough, you see the same threads over and over and over and over and over... People asking the same questions about how to do something. They get seventeen different answers -- all valid -- about how to solve their problem... all of which require them to perform something that's not entirely unlike coding to accomplish their goals. If I wanted to write my own mailer, I would have done so long ago... ;-) But, *do not confuse this criticism with a complaint*. I have used Mutt for the last 10+ years, and still haven't seen anything I'd rather use. I think the flexibility that it offers is highly desirable. All that said, what I'm trying to point out is, Mutt can offer that power and flexibility, while still offering seamless integration for a lot of things that people are always asking how to do, and this can not help but make mutt better. There has been a historical tendency to immediately reject such features out of hand, without any thoughtful discussion, because something else is capable of doing it... that's particularly mind-numbing. Do not confuse this criticism with distaste for the Unix philosophy either. I'm a huge supporter of it, and use it daily to guide the tools and solutions I develop for myself and others in my job and personal computing environment. What I do not support is arguing against addition of features that a lot of people would use, just because there's something else out there that *could* be glued onto Mutt to do it, particularly when adding the feature to Mutt would make the functionality smoother and easier to use (compared to "glue" solutions), providing a better overall experience for the user. Philosophy is fine, but usability is key. I will harp on this point: computers are a tool to make our lives easier. You should not sacrifice ease of use purely in the name of dogma. If a useful feature should be excluded (when there is someone willing to write the code), there should be a strong technical reason for such an exclusion; not simply "duh, Unix philosophy!!" -- Derek D. Martin http://www.pizzashack.org/ GPG Key ID: 0xDFBEAD02 -=-=-=-=- This message is posted from an invalid address. Replying to it will result in undeliverable mail due to spam prevention. Sorry for the inconvenience.
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