Please don't write of MhonArc too soon.
[Author not subsribed, please CC]
Consider this a "letter to the editor" from a long time subscriber[1].
As is customary in such letters, it is a rant.
I read a lot of debian lists trough the archives[2], so I feel sort of
qualified to represent the users here.
I am not sure what exactly the problems with mail archives are but
please don't write of MhonArc too soon. Try using one of those new
sites some times. They look good but for intensive reading they are
actually impractical.
For instance geocrawler.com is awful if you want to come back two days
later and read just the new messages in some threads. The same holds
for a lot of other dedicated mail archive sites. Another bad example
is the Bugtrac archive at securityfocus.org. I miss the Geek Girl!
Most of the sites I have seen that are actually practical to read use
plain and simple MhonArc!
In fact it is possible to do very nice sites.
Consider for instance:
http://tug.org/ListsArchives/pdftex/threads.html
- Most recent thread _first_
- Notice how space is saved by not repeating the subject of the thread
all the time.
For a superb date sorted page see
http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/2000-01
- Again, information is not needlesly repeated.
Somebody could do the world a great favor by combining these two and
sending the results to MhonArc author for inclusion as the default.
And now I'll stop bothering you.
Jan
Footnotes:
[1] Although in this context "non-subscriber" would be more appropriate.
[2] Don't ask we why. The original idea was that I would read list I
don't subscribe too less intensively I guess. That doesn't really
work, but anyway.
--
Jan Vroonhof http://www.math.ethz.ch/~vroonhof/
Mathematik, vroonhof @ math.ethz.ch
HG E16, ETH-Zentrum, Tel: +41-1-6325456/25154
Raemistrasse 101, CH-8092 Zuerich. Fax: +41-1-6321085
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