On Tue, Apr 12, 2016 at 05:28:08PM +1000, Erik Christiansen wrote: > > But you must see the flaw with this approach: It requires every user > > to make efforts to integrate their own solution for searching for > > their mail > > Whether that's an attempt at humour, or just late for April 1, eludes > me. The flaw with the postulating paragraph is that there is no need > for integration of "own solution for searching". That is already > provided by Unix - for free, as is.
Your solution is to use grep. How well does that work if your mail is stored on an imap server which you don't have shell access to, or in any sort of a server where the mail store is in a database which you again, do not have access to, even if you happen to have shell access to that machine? In this case, the ONLY place to put the search functionality is in the mail client. > Compatible cooperating utilities always beat competing and often > conflicting monoliths, in my several decades of experience. I think I just proved otherwise. The other benefit that a monolith can provide is consistency of interface. That reduces learning curve even further. Of course you can write a monolith that fails at this, but the point would be to NOT do that. ;-) > Your own words make that case for me. No monolith "is the right solution > for every problem." That does not prove your case; it does nothing to prove that a monolith is not better IN THIS SPECIFIC CASE. :) > The really big benefit of the Unix approach is that the same utility > know-how can be applied to every problem, as it is only the mix of > utilities used, and their parameters, which vary. The downside is that typical users don't want to learn all those tools, and by and large have no reason to. They use the web and e-mail, and very little else. All those Unix tools come into play exactly zero if their mail client already has reasonable search capabilities. This is fine for you and me; we have lots of reasons to know those tools. But we have had at least a few non-technical users asking questions about how to do things on mutt-users over the years, and I have to think there are more who don't post or even subscribe. Your solution forces those people to learn a pile of tools they likely otherwise have no use for. That's a monumental wasted effort, if you ask me. Frankly, I love Mutt, and I'm plenty technical; but I'd still prefer to see it become WAY easier to learn and use, even if I know how to dance around all the issues that it presents me by not solving them itself. -- 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 due to spam prevention. Sorry for the inconvenience.
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