On Thu, Jan 27, 2005 at 11:00:02AM -0500, John Franklin wrote: > Claims of UNIXy are nice, but will that be a consolation when mutt get > forked? There is a crying need for this feature (see the others on this > list who hav asked for it), a patch already exists[1], and yet no one is > willing to integrate it in to the tree? > > The patch is UNIXy in its own way. Mutt is good at managing e-mail. > libESMTP is good at delivering e-mail to a server. They're > both simple tools that do their thing well. Rather than fork off a > process, use a library call. The library has function parameters as > its API. The process has command line options. What's the difference? I've always been a fan of the Unix Philosophy, but I have to agree with this argument and the others that go along with it. The reality is that configuring most of the MTAs out there is too hard for the average person who just wants to read mail (though perhaps the same could be said of mutt -- it's perhaps not really a good program for people who don't want to spend time figuring out how things work). There are an increasing number of reasons why its beginning to make more sense to incorporate SMTP functionality into mutt, and it seems unlikely that trend will change soon. The trade-off involved in the decision to add or not add ALL of these features seems to be whether to keep things simple for the users or for the coders. Both have merit. Ultimately, to me, the answer comes down to why we use computers in the first place. I think it's safe to say that for most peole, it's to make their lives easier and/or reduce their workload. Making design decisions which force users to learn more and/or spend more time configuring multiple programs seems to fly in the face of that, to me... But then, I'm not maintaining mutt. ;-) -- 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. Sorry for the inconvenience. Thank the spammers.
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