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 -=-=-=-=- 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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