[Alpine-info] Re: Re: Strange behaviour in deleting from Gmail

[Joe(theWordy)Philbrook]

6~
It would appear that on Dec 16, Mark Crispin did say:


> You misunderstand.  There are other choices between alphabet soup and mouse.


Perhaps so. But depending on your definition of alphabet soup...  I'm
curious, using oo.o writer for an example, would you consider "ctrl+p" or
"'Alt+f'p" to be less alphabet soupy than "%"? How about "'Alt+f't" verses
"e"???


> Once upon a time, people understood how to do command interfaces that were

> neither alphabet soup ("; is the command to search") 


I'll admit that I wouldn't think much of using keys like "%" to start the
print dialog, or ";" to select messages if there wasn't that nice helpful 
on screen key guide at the bottom of the screen. But I've always been glad
that most of the "commands" don't require cording keys. I usually wind up
typing one handed and some modifier+key combos are difficult that way.


> nor cryptic ("cat is the command to view the contents of a file, grep is

> the command to search through files,...").


Now your picking on the executable names of the software, rather than the
command interface itself. And while I'd agree that an awful lot of
traditional unix tools were poorly named, I don't see that as any worse
than the executable names of some of the software on some other operating
systems.  It's been so long since I needed to know, for example, that the
executable name of a program I don't willingly use anymore was winword...  
And is "ls" really any worse than "dir"??? If you ask me, it's mostly a
matter of what you get used to. 

What was/will-be wrong with the unix command interface has been a lack of a
good command index that would list the command names associated with a
function. IE If such a command index was named "index" then "index edit"
should tell me a little about both vim and pico etc... And the fact that
the command to find out how to use a command hasn't remained very
consistent (man command, info, command, command --help, etc) nor has any of
them a very good track record in explaining how to use "command" to someone
who didn't go to college. 
 

> That knowledge has largely been lost, except in the minds of a few individuals

> over the age of 50.  But, other lost knowledge is being rediscovered by the

> millenial kids (Gen-X is largely a lost cause).  I suspect this too will be

> rediscovered in the fullness of time.

 
I certainly hope so. But since by the time that happens most of my synapses
will no doubt have calcified so much as to make learning the new improved
interface a bit of a challenge... So since I'm already used to the current
bash shell and tools like mc, I just pray they decide they don't have to
tear it all down to make room for the new stuff, at least until my
children's children have great grandkids...


> > > The modalities need to be replaced with windows and panels.

> > The very fact that it doesn't clutter my desktop with multiple open

> > windows is one of the things I like about alpine.

> 

> Except when you need something from more than one message at a time. 


The ability to open more than one message at a time would be nice. But I
put a *lot* of value on my ability to access my mail functions the next
time I do something stupid (or some software update does it for me) that
breaks the x server... 


> Or you want to view a newly received message without having to postpone

> the message that you are composing first.  


Did I mention I use fetchmail???

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