Re: Balsa as a newsreader?!

[Jules Bean <jules jellybean co uk>]

On Wed, Oct 11, 2000 at 08:11:56AM -0700, Matthew Guenther wrote:
> 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:

As Matthew already knows, I disagree :-)  However since he actively works
on Balsa, and I only kibitz from the sidelines and very occasionally
upload new debian packages, his word has more weight than mine.

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

I don't see why this should be the case, to be honest.

> 
> 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

But 96% of what a news reader needs is exactly what a mail reader
needs. They are interfaces to systems which are (nearly) logically
equivalent.  Personally, I'd like to have the same interface to both systems.

> 
> 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?  

Because we've already reinvented the hard part of the wheel.  Remember 
that NNTP is (almost) a subset of IMAP, functionality-wise, and we
already support IMAP.

Jules