On Mon, Sep 05, 2005 at 09:49:32AM -0400, Derek Martin wrote: > these days where hardware has gotten so fast. Often new features or > suggestions to improve consistency have been shot down in the name of > computing expense, but to a large extent I think this argument has become I'm not sure I'd call it "often". > I really can't agree. Computing is one of the few places where you > can have your cake, and eat it too. That is, you can implement both, > and let the users choose which one they prefer to use... Without coming down on either side here, you make it sound like that's free, and it isn't - it costs, in various ways. > By arguing against features on the basis of performance, especially > when those features are format-specific, you're basically telling the > user that you know best, and they should not want to perform that This is exactly what's done every time people decide not to make something an option. It's not done enough, I think. Sure, you can go too far - step forward the GNOME people - but you can equally go too far the other way, and make absolutely everything an option. > After all, if a particular operation is done frequently enough that the > user decides waiting for it is too slow with their chosen format, they can > always convert to a different one, if it is important enough... How do they know that it's particular to the mail format they're using, rather than just because mutt's slow...? > As it stands, Mutt uses far less computing resources than a lot of the > more popular e-mail clients, so I don't see how code bloat or Which reminds me - somewhere along the lines, I think we've had a memory leak introduced. At least, after it's been up for a while and reading messages, the memory used seems much larger than it used to be. I usually catch it at about 11MB and quit. Must run it through valgrind at some point. > people use to compose their mail with Mutt, the Emacsen -- probably > the most popular editor amongst Linux users, at least -- has a VSZ[1] Actually, I think Vim is. At least going from the yearly poll of some magazine - Linux Journal? Can't remember... > On modern computing hardware, these issues (computing expense and code > bloat) really have become non-arguemnts. ... which is how you end up with programs like Firefox, which consumes all of your RAM. I found the other day that between Firefox and its use of the X server it had exhausted the swap space on this machine. :/ -- Paul
Attachment:
signature.asc
Description: Digital signature