nmh-workers
[Top] [All Lists]

Re: [Nmh-workers] What are and what should be the qualifications for a current nmh user

2014-05-13 10:20:08
I will try, as already discussed, to generate some data about my use of show.
But in the meantime, my remarks about the qualifications of an nmh 1.6 user
were not meant to be snide, although they may have come out that way.

Seriously guys, the Email of 2014 is vastly more complex than it was 38 years
ago when MH was conceived. Is an "All power to the user" mail client usable by
nearly anybody, feasible today.? In trying to make nmh usable by anybody who
can use a command line interface, are you aiming for too much? In any case, I
think you (the nmh developers) should think about maybe making your target
users more explicit.

Ken Hornstein <kenh(_at_)pobox(_dot_)com> writes:
Original versions of MH were used, after just a few weeks of training, by
secretaries who had never seen a computer terminal. The training also included
use of an Ambassador terminal, the Rand editor, and maybe a dozen UNIX
commands. Email has grown much, much more complex since then, so it would be
unreasonable to hold nmh 1.6 to that high standard But maybe some thought
should be given to what the standard should be?

My goal, at least for 1.6, was to have the out-of-the-box behavior for
mhshow to be useful.  That it, it should display text parts (at least
plain and hopefully HTML, if you have the right helper programs installed).

In general, I'd like the out of the box behavior of nmh to work reasonably
well.  Configuration of how you get mail, yes, that will require some
changes.  But other stuff shouldn't hopefully be necessary.

In particular, trying to get mhshow to work, I'm beginning to wonder if I'm
qualified to use nmh 1.6.

Hey, if it's THAT hard, clearly I didn't meet my goal.  So ... what's wrong?


    Norman Shapiro

_______________________________________________
Nmh-workers mailing list
Nmh-workers(_at_)nongnu(_dot_)org
https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/nmh-workers

<Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread>