Ed, On Wed, Sep 17, 2014 at 02:33:21PM -0400, Ed Blackman wrote: > I'm not one of the developers of Mutt, nor am I some representative > of all of Mutt's users. However, it seems to me that the devs and > at least most of the users like things as they are, such that you > need to know a good bit about email to use Mutt. Otherwise they > would be developing changes[1] or switching to another email client.
I'm well aware, I'm one of those people. I've been here for the better part of 20 years ($#@!). Go on, search the archives, you will find me there. :) > That being the case, I don't know that passionate rants on the > mailing list are going to do much good. You misunderstand my purpose. And while it may seem that way, I am not ranting. This thread arose because of what one user perceived as a flaw in the way Mutt handles a standard feature of e-mail clients: flowed text formatting. What I have been doing, mostly, was refuting the notions that 1. there is no flaw, and that 2. tighter integration between editor and Mutt is not a good solution, not only to that problem, but to others (there was a third thing, which I'll get to momentarily). Those arguments were attacked, and I defended them. You are free to decide that Mutt is fine the way it is as a matter of your personal preference, but from a technical standpoint, my arguments are correct. New(ish) users often post asking for better solutions to some of the problems caused by Mutt's obsolesence, only to be told that Mutt's way is the One True Way and they are wrong for asking. But that is sheer idiocy. [I exaggerate the situation slightly. ;-)] When code can accomplish what dozens or hundreds or thousands of people must do manually, that's usually the right answer... assuming you can find someone to do the coding (and that's the trick). > Making things easier for non-geeks, when non-geeks are not likely to > want to use mutt for many other reasons other than difficulties > writing flowed or HTML text, doesn't seem to be a priority. Making things easier for non-geeks also makes them easier for geeks. If they can be made easier (or more fluid/consistent/efficient or whatever), how is that EVER a bad thing, regardless of how you classify yourself? > [1] Quick googling finds this message suggesting a feature freeze > for 1.6: http://markmail.org/message/pdqwhg277u7lwzer Note that we > recently passed the 8th anniversary. Indeed. This brings me to the third thing that my posts were sort of hinting at, without actually saying it: Mutt is basically done. If you don't like how it does what it does, you should probably use something else... or at least be prepared to hack together a fix of your own, which you will most likely have to maintain forever. -- 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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