Re: [Evolution] Comments and questions on the Evolution mailer

[guenther <guenther rudersport de>]

On Mon, 2005-01-03 at 08:37 +0100, Svante Signell wrote:
> On Fri, 2004-12-31 at 17:08 +0100, guenther wrote:
> > On Fri, 2004-12-31 at 01:41 +0100, Svante Signell wrote:
> > > On Tue, 2004-12-28 at 23:56 +0100, guenther wrote:
> > >
> > > > > > > 1. Is it possible to remove attachments, to save disk space?
> > > > > > no 
> > > > > Is this hard to implement? In Emacs VM the removed attachement name
> > > > > remains in the original mail. 
> > > >
> > > > We already had this discussion in the past. IIRC removing attachments is
> > > > considered "evil", cause it alters the original (received) mail and
> > > > therefore isn't the original one any longer. Which effectively means,
> > > > the Message-Id must not stay the same...
> > >
> > > In my opinion this is not freedom, at least not in the GNU sense... 
> >
> > You don't understand GNU and it's freedom.
> >
> > What you are talking about is "free beer". You want a feature, so others
> > should code it for you. You just want to use it -- for free.
> >
> > Free Software is about free speech, not free beer. You got the code. You
> > may change it. *That* is freedom. You want a feature? Go for it, do it
> > yourself. You are free to to it.
>
> I'm sorry if I offended somebody. This was not the intention. I'm
> completely aware of the GNU ideas, since I have been following GNU
> development under *NIX long before even Linux existed. 

No offense taken bro. :)  I just felt the strong urge to correct that
definition of "freedom"...


> I would like to clarify my statement on freedom. The freedom I meant is
> loosely related to the GNU ideas in that you can make patches and
> implement the changes you consider important. Howver, if your changes
> are not accepted upstream, the user base of your changes might be very
> small. 

True. However, this does not limit your freedom in any way.


Anyway, regarding the original topic:

I just answered (granted, briefly) -- and pointed you to the previous
discussions and even RFCs. Have you read them? Discussing "removing of
attachments" yet again doesn't make a lot of sense, if there are no new
arguments -- if any.

I did not say this feature will never be included. It may eventually, if
someone comes up with a proper solution to all the issues and caveats
mentioned before. The Message-ID thingy is just one of them, which I
remembered and consider important. In fact, I mentioned this issue
was /considered/ "evil" (by some of the folks who actually read all the
relevant RFCs). I did not say it /is/ evil, nor did I intend to.


> The ideas of freedom meant was more about the freedom of choices in the
> *NIX world compared to the M$S. In the *NIX world you can solve a
> problem in many different ways, for example for editing a file you can
> use a very large number of editors, compared to a very few in the M$S
> world. With the development of Evolution and the Gnome desktop the
> number of alternatives and choices are restricted, moving towards the M
> $S case.

I don't think I agree here. I (as a user) still have all the
alternatives around I used to have. No application vanishes, in fact I
get even more choice.

For example mail clients. Today I can use any mail client which was
around 5 years ago. With the Gnome Desktop I now have Evolution too. The
KDE Desktop offers a new mail client. Mozilla and Opera are pretty new
too, and since a couple of weeks I got the choice of Thunderbird.

Especially the last one demonstrates how the development of one
application can fork -- offering yet another mailer. So I don't see how
my alternatives and choices are restricted.


I choose to use the Gnome Desktop, cause I love it. Which offers one
official mailer and one official browser. But that doesn't mean at all
I'm limited to this Desktop of my choice and it's official apps.

I use OpenOffice.org rather than Abiword and Gnumeric. I use Mozilla
rather than Epiphany. I use k3b (once in a while) in addition to
gnome-cd-burner -- mainly cause there currently is no choice in Gnome
land. And I do know KDE lovers who use Evolution.

The knowledgeable user still will use the apps that suits him most.


> Maybe this is the intention of the developers and users. The
> users only get confused by the number of alternatives available. If this
> is the by all agreed upon direction I will not make any more noise about
> this issue.

Not everyone agrees -- and as long as this is Linux aiming for the
Desktop, this ain't gonna happen.

Anyway, the Gnome Desktop especially tries to provide a userfriendly,
integrated Desktop with as much options and settings as needed, but no
more than necessary. [1] We all know there are Desktops out there which
tend to confuse the user by the sheer mass of dispensable settings...


The Gnome Desktop (as well as KDE) tries to provide all apps necessary
for daily work. And in order to not confuse the user there sure is only
one *official* app for any given task.

Even this doesn't mean there is no choice. Beside the official
application there is another Gnome app serving the same purpose that
competes for the users.

But we are getting more and more off-topic here...


Regarding the original topic (again):

Feel free to file a wish list "bug" in bugzilla regarding "removing of
attachments" (which is already done, IIRC) or try discussing this topic
with the Mailer hackers (who should be back soon) on this list. But
please, try searching the archives first.

If you even ponder providing a patch a want to check if it would be
accepted upstream first, e-h [2] would be the place to ask...

...guenther


[1] yeah, I sometimes would love to have a few more options for tweaking
    the Desktop and its applications

[2] http://lists.ximian.com/mailman/listinfo/evolution-hackers


-- 
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