On Sun, Aug 08, 1999 at 11:38:32PM -0700, rex wrote:
> On Sun, Aug 08, 1999 at 10:42:36PM -0500, Jeremy Blosser wrote:
> >
> > This is technically a bug in pine. If Mutt repeats this bug, we don't make
> > any progress. People using pine should bug the developers to fix it if
> > they care about it. Until then, if you care about making life easier for
> > your pine-using friends, you can use macros to produce old style messages
> > or find another work around. Bugs need to be worked around and fixed, not
> > supported.
>
> Why do you call a convention that was in use worldwide for several
> years and perfectly functional, a bug? And what's wrong with backwards
> compatibility? IMO, Mutt is following an elitist path on this issue
> which is hurting Mutt and the PGP user community. Let's face it, PGP
> is far more important to freedom than Mutt, and intentionally making
> PGP harder to use is a serious mistake. If there is any bug involved,
> it's Mutt that is buggy for not having the option of being backwards
> compatible with a solidly established worldwide convention.
You know what this whole debate reminds me of?
Back in the days when MIME was new (1994 or so?) and the 'elite' would
send MIME 'attachments' instead of uuencoded stuff like God meant, I
was sure that mail was doomed and that this MIME stuff was for the
birds. (Okay, I was using Elm back then and I still think metamail
sucks.)
In retrospect, I was way wrong: except for abominations like MS Word
documents, MIME has worked out pretty well.
The same can be said of PGP-MIME -- it works great with mail clients
that support it (Eudora, for example). For those who can't handle it
(like some of us could just barely handle MIME a few years ago), you may
have to be nice and not do it as PGP-MIME, but just as you would have
encouraged people that only had uudecode for binaries to upgrade their
software, you should encourage those stuck without PGP-MIME to upgrade
to something that supports it.
It's not even a question of 'cutting edge' -- it's a question of
standards.
--
Brian Moore | Of course vi is God's editor.
Sysadmin, C/Perl Hacker | If He used Emacs, He'd still be waiting
Usenet Vandal | for it to load on the seventh day.
Netscum, Bane of Elves.
