Path: utzoo!mnetor!tmsoft!torsqnt!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!decwrl!adobe!heaven!glenn From: glenn@heaven.woodside.ca.us (Glenn Reid) Newsgroups: comp.sys.next Subject: Re: Rich Text and comp.sys.next Message-ID: <373@heaven.woodside.ca.us> Date: 17 Dec 90 17:42:56 GMT References: <12613@milton.u.washington.edu> Reply-To: glenn@heaven.woodside.ca.us (Glenn C. Reid) Organization: RightBrain Software, Woodside, CA Lines: 95 In article <12613@milton.u.washington.edu> mrc (Mark Crispin) writes: [ lots of objections to Mail.app deleted, along with parts of previous discussion about why Mail.app is a "toy" and should not be used ] >> I also think you must be joking by putting >>/usr/ucb/Mail in this list. >It is the single mail program that more Unix users use than any other >program; particularly administrator and non-computer types. I never >use it myself, but I have to acknowledge its overwhelming importance >and the fact that any mailer that is incompatible from /usr/ucb/Mail >cuts itself off from a large body of potential users. The NeXT mailer is much more compatible with /usr/ucb/Mail than MH, for instance, which puts each message in a separate file and loses the "From " line from the beginning. The NeXT mail files are stored in folders in exactly the same file format as /usr/spool/mail, and you can read it *directly* with /usr/ucb/Mail -f ~/Mailboxes/Active.mbox/mbox if you want to (although it may require rebuilding Mail.app's index file). It's hard to get more compatible than that. Also, in 2.0, you can specify custom mail spool files and custom mailers (thanks, Bryan!) so you can put arbitrary filters between your /usr/spool/mail/ mailbox and the Mail.app if you want to. >>What I think you really mean is "what >>I'm used to" or perhaps "what I require by feeling the need to read my >>mail from eighteen different computers at various times of the day." > >This sort of personal insult does not belong in a serious discussion. It isn't a serious discussion; that's the point. It was a soliloquy until I decided to flame you for blasting Mail.app in what I thought was a pretty self-serving way. You have awfully strong things to say, and although some of your criticisms have merit, many are gratuitous and lead me to believe that it is more a religious issue for you than it is a rational discussion of tools. If you were a random mail user instead of the author of a competitive piece of software I might cut you a little more slack. >>While I'm at it, I tried your MailManager app and found that it had >>one of the worst interfaces I've used in quite some time, didn't >>dovetail at all well with Mail.app, and I forget what else, because I >>deleted it. > >You are entitled to your opinion. A growing community of MailManager >users have the opposite opinion. One man's meat may be another man's >poison. But, as noted above, there's a lot more to bash Mail.app on >that merely user interface issues. My whole point is that *no one is bashing MailManager*, but you feel the need to bash Mail.app. My point was "Mark, quit bashing Mail.app", not an attempt to get into an argument with you. I don't want to start bashing MailManager, I just want you to quit bashing other software because there's no point in it. If people want to use MailManager, that's great. >Some of my most enthusiastic users are former Mail.app users who found >that Mail.app was unusable and who find MailManager's interface to be >a great improvement. I'm glad people are using your software. I'm sure it has merit in many environments. However, the people who choose to use Mail.app instead of MailManager don't post long lists of what is wrong with MailManager to the net, although perhaps they'll start :-) >It was a non-goal of MailManager to dovetail with Mail.app -- the goal >was to dovetail with other Unix mail tools. That's brilliant. "Hey, let's take this really neat new computer and write a brand new mail tool for it that's completely incompatible with the one that ships with the machine! That way we can pretend it's not really a NeXT computer." > It is Mail.app that fails >to dovetail with anything else. That's not true. It uses the default /usr/ucb/Mail mailbox format to store its mail files. Very compatible. It sends mail with /usr/lib/sendmail. It works to/from many UNIX mail systems without modification, and the 2.0 version is even better about its compatibility. It doesn't support X.400 yet, but it seems to be a goal for NeXT. There are some gotchas, but no more than any other mail program I've used. Anyway, this is a silly discussion, and I will quit. I just wanted you to realize that I was flaming you, not MailManager, and I was defending Mail.app not entirely on its own merits, but in the sense of a public defender, since you were flaming software that wasn't likely to flame you back. Glenn -- Glenn Reid RightBrain Software glenn@heaven.woodside.ca.us PostScript/NeXT developers ..{adobe,next}!heaven!glenn 415-851-1785