* 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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