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Re: another silly question



On Sun, May 08, 2005 at 02:58:03AM +0200, Vincent Lefevre wrote:
> On 2005-05-05 13:11:17 -0500, David Champion wrote:
> > In my experience that's not true.  Thousands of my users use at least
> > two mail applications.  We've counted.  We've made charts, tables, and
> > graphs.
> 
> Those who use Mutt here do not use other MUAs.

If you truly believe that, you need to get out more.. ;-)

I myself use not one, not two, but FIVE different mailers.  Mutt,
evolution, pine, mail/mailx, and [shudder] Outpuke.  Oh, and
occasionally Mozilla mail.  Mutt is the one I prefer BY FAR, and it is
the one I use the most BY FAR, but sometimes it's just simply not
available, or too much of a hastle to deal with on a system I don't
manage.

> > Of those mailers, only Mutt understands Maildir.  Virtually
> > everything understands mbox.
> 
> AFAIK, not mairix (or has this changed?).

Mairix isn't a MUA in the traditional sense.  It's mainly a searching
tool.

> > When people leave the University, many take their e-mail with them.
> > It needs to be in a portable format, unless they know what they're
> > doing.
> 
> If need be, Mutt can convert a maildir mailbox to a mbox mailbox by
> copying messages.

Sure it can, but why bother when you can just keep your mail in mbox
format from the start.
> 
> > Maildir provides better resilience under NFS, but how many people
> > really encounter NFS problems with their mail?
> 
> Even if not many users have encountered mailbox corruption, this is
> still more annoying than having to look for a converter for instance.

Only if it happens to you.  As you've already said, mutt can do the
conversion, so there's no need to look for a converter. :)

> > What's actually *wrong* with mbox as a default, other than that it's
> > not your preference?
> 
> I just suggested the change. One may also wonder if there should be
> a default or if the user should read some documentation about the
> various formats and the possible problems before choosing...

Yeah there definitely should be a default.  A mailer that doesn't
provide reasonable defaults is braindead.  A user should be able to
minimally use a mailer (or almost any kind of program) with zero 
configuration, whenever possible.  Having to decide on a mailbox
format is a decision that the average user should never have to make,
particularly since the reasons to choose one over the other are
decidedly technical, and the average user may not understand them,
even if you give them a reasonable amount of information about the
options.

-- 
Derek D. Martin    http://www.pizzashack.org/   GPG Key ID: 0xDFBEAD02
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