From owner-freebsd-stable Tue Dec 21 6:16:29 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from mail1.gmx.net (mail1.gmx.net [194.221.183.61]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with SMTP id DA45A14EAB for ; Tue, 21 Dec 1999 06:16:23 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from Gerhard.Sittig@gmx.net) Received: (qmail 9907 invoked by uid 0); 21 Dec 1999 14:16:19 -0000 Received: from pc19f5d08.dip.t-dialin.net (HELO speedy.gsinet) (193.159.93.8) by mail1.gmx.net with SMTP; 21 Dec 1999 14:16:19 -0000 Received: (from sittig@localhost) by speedy.gsinet (8.8.8/8.8.8) id MAA16372 for freebsd-stable@freebsd.org; Tue, 21 Dec 1999 12:41:18 +0100 Date: Tue, 21 Dec 1999 12:41:18 +0100 From: Gerhard Sittig To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Subject: Re: freebsd-stable wannabe tester Message-ID: <19991221124118.A15372@speedy.gsinet> Mail-Followup-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org References: <385D9D5C.7CA03233@wcnet.net> <19991220154158.O11805@speedy.gsinet> <385EC71E.725FC43@wcnet.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 1.0i In-Reply-To: <385EC71E.725FC43@wcnet.net>; from jestess@wcnet.net on Mon, Dec 20, 1999 at 06:17:34PM -0600 Sender: owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG completely OT, feel free to delete this junk and end this dead end of a thread ... On Mon, Dec 20, 1999 at 18:17 -0600, John Estess wrote: > Gerhard Sittig wrote: > > > > On Sun, Dec 19, 1999 at 21:07 -0600, John Estess wrote: > > > > > > Why does "Reply" send back to the address of the person and > > > not the mailing list? > > > > Because you have a poor mail frontend, no matter what others > > tell you :> [ ... ] Sorry to see this here on the list. This one was my reply by PM and not everybody seems to know the difference between public and private messages :< I'm aware of that it's been OT and not at all of general interest (although I'm convinced of what I wrote). Just in case others ARE interested: mutt (besides being very free in configurability, supporting MIME, having pgp built in, colorizing headers / sigs / quotations / etc, matching patterns to take actions, handling multiple inboxes, customizes settings according to the folder you are in or the person you write to if you want it to, etc) has some special features for handling large message volumes: list-reply (next to reply and group-reply) and threading. This makes mailing lists more comfortable to keep track of and reduces traffic (and avoids the felt need to correct any addresses by hand but still provides all the functionality any other mailer does, too). Grouping old and new or important and unimportant stuff by colors does some good, too. And if you're used to do your work using a keyboard instead of going miles with your mouse everything runs smoothly and is really quickly done. For more info have a look at www.mutt.org, please. I didn't want to start a religious war here (that's why I didn't want to talk about mailers or editors in public -- PM is a completely different matter). Sorry, once more. It's really sad to see personal messages being torn to this forum ... If you feel like discussing this with me, please do a favour to the list's readers and reply in private. I can promise there won't be a summary everyone's happy with, that's why I will never try to write one :) > > Look out for those X-Mailer Lines and compare them to what > > you think how experienced the authors are wrt computers and > > what they expect in terms of functionality or flexibility or > > suitability ... > > Elitism by X-mailer headings. I never thought of that one. I > never thought I'd have to resort to Pine again to get any > respect :-) Not to let a wrong impression bubble up: I don't conclude from used software to behaviour. But when behaviour is somewhat non conformant (sorry, I lack a better word for what I want to express and "defective", "silly" or "brain dead" are too strong words for this) or important features are missing or certain errors occur, one might be tempted to guess "Ahh, it's THIS mailer causing THAT trouble.". And too many times the assumptions prove themselves correct ... We all know the repetition of "failed" messages of Netscape users when they actually succeeded resulting in multiple identical messages causing many threads to show up since the replying readers don't "agree" on which message to "follow". We know that MS doesn't respect the convention to use "Re: " or "(fwd)" and thus confusing almost everyone who's not coming from the same region as the author. We see a thread being split or misformed every time Outlook or Lotus rips "References:" or "In-Reply-To:" off which makes it hard to follow a flowing discussion. We know the posters who don't know what exactly they refer to and since in doubt cite everything in full (including sigs and list footers). We see and hate the blown up multipart/alternative messages which don't provide any higher amount of information for allocating four times the volume of plain text. We see some people "collect" address entries over a thread's life time using group-reply which makes the list of recipients even longer than the actual message being sent and which sends copies over and over to people getting the message already since they're on the list. And we see the regular question "Why won't 'reply' reply to the list?" which comes from broken mailers missing useful reply functions or hiding them from the user. And this misfeatures' list could be continued without end ... Not everything of the above is a software failure. Some things just come from pure laziness or ignorance -- that's where wrong defaults do their job since many people cannot even imagine that a default setup is already defective. It could be so easy to have a great cooperation and painless handling of even large volume lists if it wasn't for some really bad annoyances ... I personally don't want to accept any defective software. This is even more a priority to me once I know of alternatives. And I want to configure the aspects whenever I'm not satisfied with the defaults (or default behaviour). That's why I've been working on UNIX for ages escaping the other systems (or even fleeing them). That's what I said above: Look at people's expectations and they almost certainly won't employ certain software which disqualifies in some ways. Unless they're forced to do so for any reason I can't tell or even think of. That's why I believe there's a drift to certain software once you experience the things you don't like about your current software and look out for something more comfortable or more appropriate for this job. Some programs might be nice to click on and to look at. But they cannot cope with real volume or more specific requirements growing over time. Please forgive me if I should have used the wrong words. Since English is not my native language chances are good that I wrote complete nonsense actually meaning something different. But I'm sure replies will tell me so ... This message is not meant to be a justification for the cited words I wrote. I just felt I had to clear up that I don't judge posters from the software they use. BUT I'm against nonthinking action. And I see a common sense about "applicable" software amongst experienced users. virtually yours - Gerhard Sittig -- mail -s "get pgp key" Gerhard.Sittig@gmx.net < /dev/null If you don't understand or are scared by any of the above ask your parents or an adult to help you. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message