Re: Mail reader
Gary Hennigan wrote:
> I could ask the same question only turned around -- Why use 4 or 5
> utilities, with each being a possible point of failure in what these
> days has become an important communication medium to most folks, when
> one will suffice?
Because it allows me to pick the best tool for each job, and continually
refine those choices. procmail is probably no longer the best tool for
sorting mail, so I will probably stop using it soon. I used to think
that jed was the best tool for composing mail. One of these days I will
probably ditch mutt. It's nice to be able to swap out one tool and not
have to throw away all the others too.
As to the FUD about point of failure, I have much more trust in a tool
that was designed for its job than a mail reader which just has mail
filtering or imap support or what have you bolted onto the side. Simple
programs have simpler bugs.
> Gnus doesn't edit my mail, emacs does. Like I said, I use procmail to
> download my mail to 1 of 3 mail boxes then I use gnus to sort those
> into appropriate folders. Also, I don't let gnus act as a MTA (can it
> even do that?). On my system it just connects to port 25 on localhost
> and that loads it off to exim on this box. Could Emacs+gnus do all
> that? Maybe, but that's the great thing about Emacs, it probably could
> do almost everything you want, but you don't have to use it in that
> mode.
Oh, so you _do_ use a collection of tools, each of which is a "possible
point of failure". I see.
> Anyway, I'm glad you're happy. I'm happy too and I've been using Emacs
> + Gnus for an awful long time (since around 1988 I think!) and it's
> tuned to meet my needs exactly.
I've been evolving my current toolset since 1994 :-P
--
see shy jo
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