Re: it is time to retire non-MIME MUAs

In article <vxkek26nntq.fsf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Karl Kleinpaste <karl+usenet@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
philip@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Philip Homburg) writes:
Not for me. I see absolutely no point in mixing public discussions with
private correspondence.
...
(I have to admit that I'd like to feed my mailing list messages to trn.
Of of these days I'd have hack a private mailing list gateway into
my news server).

As you observe, perhaps without meaning to do so, "public discussion"
is not synonymous with "NNTP". SMTP from one person to one other
person is private, but SMTP to a mailing list has the character of
news. NNTP to a worldwide group obviously is news, but NNTP to a
newsgroup with very restricted readership on a private news server has
the character of private mail.

For me it isn't. Even if a message reaches a small audience, I still
do not consider it private. Private is where I get to pick the
recipients for each individual message.

There is a complete combinatoric
taxonomy of "private -vs- public" and "SMTP -vs- NNTP," and all cases
work; the interface which delivers it doesn't matter. So that one
interface can provide all the same functions -- on point, MIME support
-- for any entry in the set: Add a feature for SMTP purposes, and it's
already there for NNTP, too.

You are right the low level interface does not matter much. However,
I don't consider NNTP a good protocol for point-to-point communication.

So there are actually just three combinations (one-to-one SMTP, one-to-many
SMTP, one-to-many NNTP).

So I don't need to feed mailing list content to my news server; my
reading and posting interface gives me the same effect, so that a
group known in my interface as comp.emacs.xemacs.beta (where I receive
xemacs-beta SMTP) is news, as far as I'm concerned.

This is limitation of trn. Trn can't deal mailing list messages in
mailboxes. However, in my opinion, NNTP is the right interface between
a news user agent and a public discussion. So, it much better to implement
an NNTP gateway to mailing list mail in a mailbox than trying to add mbox
support to trn.

Frankly, most
combined interfaces do this to a certain degree, but many (most?) of
them don't get it quite right because the designers didn't think
through all the implications of that 2x2 taxonomy.

The user interfaces of trn and mh are so completely different that I see
no point in trying to make a single program that offers both interfaces.

Take the concept of "followup," apply it to email, sic it on mailing
lists. The interface I use makes it an identical function -- the only
place where it matters is that there is one header line's difference
(and that can be hidden), and when I say "send," it picks the suitable
outbound channel, the specifics of which don't matter to the user. As
it happens, it will even do simultaneous "mail to this address while
also posting to that newsgroup" in the very rare case where that's
appropriate.

I think that 'followup' is the most boring part of e-mail and netnews
clients.

The important (for me) is how the systems keep track of what has been done,
how incoming messages are filtered, etc.

Just another proof case for a single, well-designed interface that
hides the details, but then by nature provides all the same higher-
level functions, like MIME handling.

Some common code for rendering MIME is a good idea. But I think that on my
system, trn calls mh to render MIME, so that is taken care of.


--
That was it. Done. The faulty Monk was turned out into the desert where it
could believe what it liked, including the idea that it had been hard done
by. It was allowed to keep its horse, since horses were so cheap to make.
-- Douglas Adams in Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency
.

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