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Re: Poll: personal convenience vs. global improvement of docs



* Seth Williamson <hazelmotes@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> There was another poster who suggested that mutt has remained
> stagnant at a time when other mail clients are moving forward. 
> Speaking for myself, it seems that mutt's authors have created a
> client that does about everything that can be done with a
> console-based mailer.

Well, from a mere end users point of view I fail to see the relevant
point of stagnation when it comes to mutt. Maybe it's about one's
(induced) requirements that shifted.


> On the other hand, however, I think there's truth in the notion
> that the Internet has progressed to a point at which mutt's selling
> points are perhaps not as compelling as they may have been some
> years ago.

I beg to differ. mutt is a console-based client, whereas 'the
internet' has made progress (if one wants to call it such) mostly on
other fields. In fact, I fail to recite just one progress which had
real impact on a console-based mail client like mutt. But then again,
I'm a mere user. People which know of "progress" (or better, are made
aware of it) usually tend to stick with it and regard reliable
working solutions as out-dated and to be avoided. It's a group thing.


> You have to learn a certain amount about how computers and the
> Internet work in order to get the most out of mutt.  This is by no
> means a bad thing.  But I am starting to wonder about the ratio of
> payback to investment.  The reason is that I've been fiddling for
> several days trying to get mutt to send and retrieve gmail properly
> and I guess I will eventually get it, but I couldn't help notice
> that, while I took a break in working on mutt, I was able to
> configure Kmail to do the job in about 90 seconds.  Now, maybe mutt
> will eventually save me time on my daily e-mail work--I don't know
> enough about it to say for sure.  But I have to wonder if that
> speculative savings will outweigh the time I've invested in
> figuring out how to get it to work in the first place.

Maybe mutt isn't what you are looking for. A mere new user with
pretty much ordinary requirements of email handling is better suited
with a GUI mail client. Especially when the new user would have to
learn the way of "commandline".


> This is not a criticism of mutt so much as it is just thinking
> aloud to myself.  I don't know the answer.  I DO know that, for
> most people today, the Internet and e-mail are mainly tools to
> accomplish something else.  For me, it's freelance writing.  For
> another person I know, it's designing gardens; for another, it's
> ornithological research, etc.  If your life and your career impel
> you to focus mainly on some other job with (for example) e-mail as
> a tool to help you do it, you naturally want to spend most of your
> time on your final goal, whatever it might be.

One usually chooses the best suited tool.


> Robert Frost would have been bemused if somebody said he had to
> learn about paper manufacture and how to make pencils before he
> could write poetry.

That's the point; other email clients do exist that make life easier
for mere end users. I guess Robert would have appreciated the fact
that he could haven chosen out of 256 uniquely coloured pencils to
write his poetry :-)


-- 
left blank, right bald

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