Re: freedomization task list [was: Re: Dangerous precedent being set - possible serious violation of the GPL]
On Wed, Dec 08, 1999 at 11:24:17AM -0400, Ben Armstrong wrote:
> *Any* more memory will impact on the freenet. It runs on the
> donations of the membership, so they don't have an awful lot extra
> to throw at new hardware. Hmm ... freedom of system from non-free
> software vs. more money for hardware? Not a difficult choice.
>
> There should be a good free alternative for pine/pico, and it
> shouldn't use more memory than pine/pico use now, as that is an
> important reason many sites use them.
if that's why they use pine rather than mutt then there is something
wrong with their calculator.
mutt uses significantly less memory when reading large mailbox files.
prove it to yourself. find a 5 or 10MB mailbox file. load it up in mutt,
and check memory usage. then load it up in pine and check memory again.
an example:
one 10MB mailbox file:
$ ls -l testbox
-rw------- 1 cas cas 10852751 Dec 9 19:44 testbox
load it in pine, start at message 1 and scroll through each message
until you've read each one, then do a search for "foobar" in the message
body (a reasonable simulation of use):
$ ps v -Cpine
PID TTY STAT TIME MAJFL TRS DRS RSS %MEM COMMAND
27988 pts/7 S 0:12 14213 1674 2373 2128 1.6 pine -f testbox
load it in mutt, and do the same:
$ ps v -Cmutt
PID TTY STAT TIME MAJFL TRS DRS RSS %MEM COMMAND
28000 pts/7 S 0:07 1725 391 1992 1452 1.1 mutt -f testbox
actually, pine's memory usage has improved a lot. when i last used pine,
that would have used up at least 10 or 15MB of RAM. still, that's over
600K difference between pine and mutt, for the exact same mailbox file.
pine still has those annoying delays where it just sits there for 10
or 20 seconds doing nothing when you're in a large mailbox file. i'd
forgotten about that until now.
> I'll tell you why I use pine/pico. For one thing, it's because it is
> nearly universal.
sounds like a good reason for learning vi :)
> Later, after I got my own system, I considered switching over because
> of the non-free status of pine/pico. But by then I was already
> "hooked".
i see that as a potential argument for NOT supporting non-free software
on debian. by the time people realise it's non-free, they're hooked and
it's too late.
> I tried mutt for a while but found it fell short of my
> expectations/needs for similarity with the other systems I was used to
> working with.
ditto for my initial attempts at switching to mutt. however, i
persevered and it paid off. now my expectations of a mailer are greater
and i wouldn't even consider going back to pine - pine just seems
clumsy, inadequate, and slow compared to mutt.
> I haven't closed the door on that possibility. I would really like to
> switch.
it'll be hard at first, but definitely worth it.
> However, there are these few issues that are yet to be resolved:
>
> - mutt only poorly approximates the functionality of pine, and I (and my
> wife) are "power users" of pine, depending on a very wide range of
> features offered by pine and generally happy with the level & ease
> of configurability & use of pine
mutt has all of the features of pine and more.
it just doesn't look the same.
yes, switching from pine to mutt can be a pain...i know, i did it (i
forced myself to do it and it was hard at first). but it is worth the
effort.
see my earlier message to andreas today.
> - I'm used to pico ... I'm lazy ... I haven't found anything better
> for a simple editor that would be easy for me to switch to
joe or jed are pretty good for simple yet reasonable editors.
vi is hard to learn, but easy to use once you've learnt it, and vi *IS*
the universal unix editor....if a unix doesn't have vi, then it's not
real unix.
> - the integration between pico/pine doesn't exist in mutt + pick-a-
> random-editor
mutt's "set edit_headers" gives you much better than pine's integration
with pico. you can edit ALL headers with your favourite rather than
just those that pine allows by default, or those that you've had the
foresight to add to your ~/.pinerc for ^R ("Rich" headers mode)
> - the size issue that I mentioned before
mutt uses less memory than pine. OTOH, vim uses more memory than pico so
it evens out.
sample memory usage for pico, ae, vim, joe, and jed to edit a new file
called 'foo' (ordered by memory usage):
$ ps v -Cpico
PID TTY STAT TIME MAJFL TRS DRS RSS %MEM COMMAND
28124 pts/7 S 0:00 293 137 1298 648 0.5 pico foo
$ ps v -Cae
PID TTY STAT TIME MAJFL TRS DRS RSS %MEM COMMAND
28263 pts/7 S 0:00 173 20 1555 664 0.5 ae foo
$ ps v -Cjoe
PID TTY STAT TIME MAJFL TRS DRS RSS %MEM COMMAND
28168 pts/7 S 0:00 231 154 1493 840 0.6 joe foo
$ ps v -Cjed
PID TTY STAT TIME MAJFL TRS DRS RSS %MEM COMMAND
28171 pts/7 S 0:00 340 125 1798 1140 0.8 jed foo
$ ps v -Cvim
PID TTY STAT TIME MAJFL TRS DRS RSS %MEM COMMAND
28126 pts/7 S 0:00 305 512 1539 1212 0.9 vim foo
pico, ae, and joe are comparable to each other.
vim and jed are too.
> This is not an all-inclusive list, and doesn't include the needs of
> my user base (primarily my wife, but also other friends and family
> members).
fair enough. most of my friends who use my system wouldn't even think of
using vi...and most of them use pine, some use elm or mutt with either
pico or joe. i don't push them to change their evil ways (however, i do
remind them occasionally that there are better tools available)
OTOH, my partner picked up vi pretty easily. she uses mutt or pine
depending on whether she is at home or at work.
> I'm not adverse to trying new options ... but there are real-world
> constraints that keep people using non-free software. I'd like to see as
> many of those constraints removed as possible wrt the provision of a
> fully-functional free replacement for pine/pico.
IMO the best way to do that is to improve the pine emulation that mutt
already does, so that it is GOOD ENOUGH for people like you.
can't see much (if any) point in cloning pico, though - joe or jed or
even ae are more than adequate substitutes for pico.
craig
--
craig sanders
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