What OS & mail client do -you- use?

Mark C. Langston mark at bitshift.org
Mon Oct 27 17:39:25 PST 2003


On Mon, Oct 27, 2003 at 05:25:39PM -0800, Scott Doty wrote:
> 
>    "/usr/bin/netscape -remote 'openURL($URL)'"
> 
> ...either on my work machine, or home machine via ssh, depending on my
> $DISPLAY variable.


Sorry, I should have been more specific:  I don't tunnel X11 via ssh.
In this day and age of, "consumers don't need any backhaul bandwidth",
coupled with some of the spotty connectivity I deal with from time to
time, one could argue that a curses interface is already pushing one's
luck.

I should also have been clearer:  I don't mind (and, in fact, prefer)
cut'n'paste as the means to move URLs to browsers.  As I mentioned
before, the person doing the c'n'p is more likely to engage his brain
before actually loading the page in this manner.  This blind "ooooh!
Look!  A shiny new link in my email!  Must...click...now!" behavior
is almost as troublesome as MUAs that do silly things like autoload
images and act on script directives.

I'm solidly behind another poster:  I'm waiting for monochrome terminals
to make a comeback.  With the exception of web browsing, gaming (sorry;
I'm an addict), and code editing, I can do without color (though I might
miss the ANSI color capabilities of mutt and slrn).  In fact, except for
web browsing and gaming, I can do without a GUI entirely.  And
occasionally even when browsing or gaming.  And doing things like piping
an xterm across tiny pipes and long distances is rather wasteful, IMO,
when you can do the same thing in the shell you just used to invoke your
xterm, unless your goal is to run a GUI app from the remote machine.
And at that point, one could argue X11 isn't a good protocol to achieve
that end.

HTML was, is, and should always be about information display.  Whereas
email was, is, and should always be about communication.  If you need
the former to achieve the latter, you're either not doing the latter
properly, or using the wrong medium.

-- 
Mark C. Langston                                    Sr. Unix SysAdmin
mark at bitshift.org                                       mark at seti.org
Systems & Network Admin                                SETI Institute
http://bitshift.org                               http://www.seti.org



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