Re: Balsa as a newsreader?!

[Matthew Guenther <mguenthe engr UVic CA>]

On Wed, 11 Oct 2000, Karol Bryd wrote:
> Czesc! (Hi!)
> 
>     Have you ever thought about adding a newsreader to Balsa? I (and

[snip...]

> without knowing your opinion, but I would like to know how
> small or big are chances of incorporating my changes into
> main Balsa branch.

I can't speak for the rest of the development team, but I for one would
rather not see Balsa do newsreading.  There are several reasons:

1) Size.  I want a fast, convenient mail reader, and having a news component
in there is going to make things bigger and slower.  

2) Complexity.  We have trouble enough implementing everything a mail client
needs already, I can't see a newsreading component making things any easier.
It's taken us nearly two years to get to the features and more importantly
stability we have now and I'm hesitant to mess it up

3) Alternatives.  There are already many good newsreaders out there, GNOME
has Pan which is excellent, and there's also NewsFlex, KNews, and KNode for
example.  I think most of these have done as good a job or better at a
newsreader than we could expect to do, so why reinvent the wheel?  

IMHO, a better choice would be to increase the integration between the Balsa
and existing newsreaders, so people can use whatever combination of mail and
news reader they like.

MBG

-- 
Matthew Guenther                       Friends are relatives you make for
mguenthe@engr.uvic.ca                  yourself.
http://www.attcanada.ca/~mguenthe/