[OT] Was: totally satisfied :D

[H. S. Teoh]

On Tue, Sep 25, 2012 at 05:36:48PM -0400, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> On Tue, 25 Sep 2012 08:10:07 -0700
> "H. S. Teoh" <hsteoh at quickfur.ath.cx> wrote:
> > On Mon, Sep 24, 2012 at 09:55:48PM -0400, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> > > For my usual mailboxes though, I prefer typical GUI desktop
> > > clients.  Unfortunately, I still haven't been able to find one
> > > that I like.
> > 
> > Maybe you should write one in D. ;-)
> > 
> 
> Heh, I'd love to, and I've even had that in mind for some time now (a
> few years). Problem is there's a *lot* of things I'd like to do, and
> all on top of other things I *have* to do ;)

Ah yes. I have that problem too. Too many pet projects, too little time.


[...]
> > For one thing, having a MIME library in D would be awesome.
> > 
> 
> Maybe I'm just not awake enough yet but: What exactly would it do?
> Just be a mapping of "file extension" <--> "mime type"?

I must've been half-asleep when I wrote that. I meant a mail-handling
library that can handle MIME attachments.


> > I'm a big Opera fan, because Opera lets me configure stuff to work
> > the way I want it to. But I never use it for mail (I don't like
> > using a browser as an MUA, I think that's just feeping creaturism).
> > And recent releases of Opera are starting to show signs of
> > instability and excessive memory consumption, unlike earlier
> > releases, and I'm starting to wonder if I might want to switch to
> > Firefox...
> > 
> 
> Newer Operas also got rid of the "native-ish" theme, which is why I'm
> not upgrading past v10. It may seem trivial, but skinned apps *really*
> bug me.

Skinned apps don't bug me at all. I tend to like apps where you can
delete useless buttons off the UI and turn off toolbars and stuff you
never use. As well as configure custom keyboard bindings ('cos I hate
having to use the mouse unless it's needed for an *inherently* graphical
task, like picking out pixels).


> I find the UIs in the FF4-onward to be completely intolerable. Even
> FF3's UI was god-awful, and then they managed to make it worse with 4
> by going all "Chrome-envy".

What I'd _really_ like, is browser *library*, where you get to assemble
your own browser from premade parts. Like replace the lousy UI front end
with a custom interface. Applications nowadays suffer from excessive
unnecessary integration. Software should be made reusable, dammit. And I
don't mean just code reuse on the level of functions. I mean entire
software systems that are pluggable and inter-connectible. If there's a
browser that has a good back-end renderer but lousy UI, it should be
possible to rip out the UI part and substitute it with the UI of another
browser that has a better UI but lousy back-end. And if there's a
browser that comes with unnecessary bloat like a mail app, it should be
possible to outright _delete_ the mail component off the HD and have
just the browser part working. Software these days is just so monolithic
and clumsy. We need a new paradigm.


[...]
> > The result is that people revert to using table-based formatting and
> 
> Hey, I *like* table-based formatting :). Beats the hell out of trying
> to kluge together sane layouts/flowing with CSS. And nobody's ever
> going to convince me that HTML isn't the presentation layer.

I say trash it all, tables, HTML, everything. Markdown is good enough
for email. If you need more than that, go buy a real website and post it
there instead of transmitting that crap over SMTP.


T

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