Re: Poll: personal convenience vs. global improvement of docs
On 2006-05-24 20:54:22 -0400, Derek Martin wrote:
> This suggestion is right on the money, though I think doing it is a
> little easier if all the variable names are themselves grouped in that
> manner, if only because it makes them easier to track down and
> organize for the person who is going to actually write the docs. But
> even better yet, add a built-in configurator akin to what pine has.
> For complex things like send-hooks (for example) this doesn't really
> work so well; but for simple variables, it's much, much easier for the
> user to check a box (which has reasonable on-line help) than it is to
> read through the manual looking for the settings that one wants, and
> edit a config file by hand to set all the settings manually. You
> could do a dialog for things like send-hooks, though I'm not sure how
> much value that really has...
It would be very useful (ditto for other hooks and macros), because
some characters need to be recursively-quoted, and the configurator
should do that for the user. For instance, I currently have in my
.muttrc:
macro index y "<limit>~y\"( |\\\\\\\`)(
|\\\\\\\')\"<left><left><left><left><left><left><left><left><left>" "limit to
some label"
Look at the number of consecutive backslashes...
> These are just a few ways Mutt could suck less; it would be easy for
> people to think of more features that could be added. Not everyone wants
> these features, but a lot of people do, and probably a lot of people
> who didn't want them would try them if they were available. By making
> the code more modular, it should be easy to introduce such features
> without bogging mutt down for users who don't want them. I think if
> Mutt wants to continue to suck less than other mailers, this is the
> direction it needs to start heading...
>
> In the mean time, it would be really nice if we had a stable release
> that included all the nice recent additions in functionality.
>
> Oh and before someone says, "shut up and write the code..." as someone
> inevitably will:
>
> It's a big project. I couldn't possibly do it alone, even if I wanted
> to. To be done right and well, it needs organization and planning: a
> road map. And it needs a leader, which I am not. People don't like
> me, which I don't particularly blame them for; I'm direct, I'm a
> bitch, and I'm arrogant. Not a good combination for a leader. But
> until it has a leader that people are willing to follow, and who has
> some organization skills, the project I'm outlining doesn't have a
> prayer of going anywhere. Mutt NG proved that, which is too bad,
> because it was sorely needed then, and still is.
Well, I'd say that there are already lots of patches that have never
been applied. So, before speaking about future code, one should now
care about existing code.
--
Vincent Lefèvre <vincent@xxxxxxxxxx> - Web: <http://www.vinc17.org/>
100% accessible validated (X)HTML - Blog: <http://www.vinc17.org/blog/>
Work: CR INRIA - computer arithmetic / SPACES project at LORIA