Re: Aside, was: mutt - slow mbox'es
Caution to reader: this post is boring. In fact, having written it, I'm
going to go entertain myself in some other way.
* On 2004.07.21, in <20040721211858.GF5691@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
* "Patrick Shanahan" <wideglide@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> * David Champion <dgc@xxxxxxxxxxxx> [07-21-04 12:57]:
> > There is no one true mailbox format. Please don't be religious about
> > it. To do so is to construct someone else's reality.
>
> Interesting choice of words. Please expand, ?u?/?i?.
Was "?u?/?i?" a typo? If not, I don't know what it means....
Maybe it clears everything up to clarify what I mean by "reality".
I don't mean facts in hand. I mean a set of ideas that describe the
full experience of a particular mutt user -- not only that user's
observations, but also the circumstances predicating those observations.
More expansively:
The premise in this statement was that there is no one true mailbox
format. Since you didn't quote that initially, I assume you are willing
to take it as a given for the purpose of this discussion.
In that case, what I mean is that staking such claims as that converting
from mbox to maildir is "the only reasonable thing" and that "solv[ing]
the problem... means to move to maildir" are hard-lined opinions that
don't have a factual foundation, even if they are rooted in some facts
(as well as some non-factual premises). The tone is what we often call
"religious".
To make these assertions, or more precisely to believe these assertions,
is to construct a set of beliefs concerning the user experience
that mbox performance is less than what is desired. Opinions can
describe a person's experiences, which we can loosely describe as that
person's "reality", but typically they describe the experience of the
opinion-holder, and not necessarily of anyone else, since one person's
sum experience is not the same as another's. (Perhaps there are genuine
reasons that using Maildir is quite simply not an option for this user,
however attractive it might be.)
But this experience belongs to someone else, not to the person who
posted these assertions. So the opinionated evaluation that converting
to Maildir is the only rational solution does not necessarily apply.
This evaluation is founded on a construction whose role is to describe a
person's experiences, but does not, in fact, do so. The "reality" of
the OP which suits the "religious" statements was constructed, not
extant.
--
-D. dgc@xxxxxxxxxxxx NSIT::ENSS