Date: Tue, 21 Dec 1999 12:41:18 +0100 From: Gerhard Sittig <Gerhard.Sittig@gmx.net> To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Subject: Re: freebsd-stable wannabe tester Message-ID: <19991221124118.A15372@speedy.gsinet> In-Reply-To: <385EC71E.725FC43@wcnet.net>; from jestess@wcnet.net on Mon, Dec 20, 1999 at 06:17:34PM -0600 References: <Pine.BSF.4.02A.9912191848020.17357-100000@shell.uniserve.ca> <385D9D5C.7CA03233@wcnet.net> <19991220154158.O11805@speedy.gsinet> <385EC71E.725FC43@wcnet.net>
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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
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