On Tue, Sep 16, 2014 at 08:11:57PM +1000, Erik Christiansen wrote: > On 15.09.14 14:48, Derek Martin wrote: > > You had to understand how it works, and configure your editor to do it > > right. Most users do not want to do that, and they should not have to. > > IIUC, the message is that those users not only do not care to take care > with what they present to the reader, they just don't care. That has its > price.
No, WRONG WRONG WRONG. Why aren't all construction workers also competent architects or engineers? It should not be a requirement to understand the science behind how a tool works, to use it effectively. That's a large part of the point of having a tool in the first place. The message is that not everyone has time to become an expert in how e-mail works fundamentally, and not everyone should. In fact, just about no one should. This is what specialization is all about, and like it or not our society has become extremely specialized. Specialization is what enables efficiency. E-mail is a tool to enable people to collaborate; having to take time to understand the tool distracts (and detracts) from the focus--the collaboration--which defeats the purpose of having the tool. The main problem with Mutt is that it requires very specialized knowledge to use it well, and A LOT of it. This is counter to how our society works, and is extremely bad for efficiency. [Once set up to your liking, Mutt makes up for this in other ways, but it's often very hard to make a good argument that it's better than some other client that just does it all for you, properly, without you having to think much about it.] Most importantly, there are ZERO technological challenges preventing some person who does understand how all this formatting stuff works to program it once so that you don't need to understand how it works. This is much, much better for everyone. Less to maintain, and the problem needs to be solved only once (or once per mail client), instead of once by every person who uses the client. -- 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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