On Thu, May 25, 2006 at 01:51:15PM -0400, John J. Foster wrote: > On Wed, 24 May 2006, Derek Martin wrote: > > ---Major snippage of very good stuff--- > > I, for one, totally agree with everything you said. When I first finished > reading it (yes, I read it more than once), Thanks, it's nice to know that at least someone appreciates all my ranting. ;-) > I could have sworn that it was written around the end of January of > last year and posted to mutt-dev. Yeah, I tend to repeat myself a lot, because some isues don't ever change, and because the sets of ears listening change over time. > So I went back and read 2 long threads from that time Well, my impression these last several years is that mutt is not attracting significant numbers of new users (compared to other popular mailers), precisely because it does not have a lot of nice features that other clients have (even certain text-only ones). After 8 years, it's still a PITA to configure, and still has a lot of annoying quirks and inconsistencies it's had since day one. For $#@! sake, it still doesn't even get counting new mail right, for all of the different formats and protocols that it supports. It's handling of all the different mail formats is inconsistent in a variety of ways. Storage formats should NEVER dictate user interface; they're just storage formats... A mail folder contains exactly the same information, from the user's perspective, regardless of the format the mail is stored in, and the user's interface absolutely should be consistent regardless of what format is chosen. It's handling of new mail is among the worst of any mail client in existence, for example making it virtually impossible to change out of a folder which is getting bombarded with new mail in some formats. That's pathetic, especially after EIGHT YEARS to get it right. Mutt does a lot of really cool stuff, and it absolutely does make me more productive than any other mailer I've used. But IMO it's starting to look like the ham radio of mailers -- it's kind of cool, but it's mostly used by a bunch of old guys (in Internet age, which is kind of like dog years) who just don't want to let go of the past... I do really wish some young college student fed up with present-day mailers would step up and fork mutt, determined to take it into the next decade and beyond, as Michael Elkins once did... I'd love to contribute to that project, rather than bitch about this one. I've often been tempted to do it myself, but I'm neither that young nor determined any longer, and as I said already, I'm not the leader that project needs. But I think probably they'd have little motivation; they could just work on one of the other cool mailers that is actually making great strides. Sigh. -- 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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