Re: TECH: Why this low-tech forum?

En réponse à Stephen Mulraney :


>On the other hand, the mailing list format offers a plethora of advantages,
>at least with the right tools. I understand that if you just have all of
>the CONLANG posts popping into your inbox alongside mail from
>your mother and from other lists, it might not seem inconvenient. But
>in that case, you really need to learn how to use your mail client properly.
>For example, I read my list mail with the mail application that comes with
>Mozilla. It's able to filter all my list mail (for multiple lists) into
>appropriate
>folders, according to fairly complex rules that are quite easy to set up.
>It's able to thread discussions by subject title, which makes it convenient
>to skip and skim, and of course the response is instantaneous. It handles
>Unicode [when the server doesn't eat it] and most other encodings with
>ease (meaning that even if it chooses the wrong one, it's quite quick for
>me to correct it). And although I'm quite a Mozilla fan, I suspect that
>there's
>nothing unusual about these features: at least OE and Eudora must have
>comparable abilities.
Eudora, incredibly, still cannot handle Unicode (and it is not even 
planned!). Only because of that I'm closer and closer to changing to 
Thunderbird (but I want to wait until they arrive at version 1.0). I don't 
think it has threading capacities either (but I don't mind since I prefer 
reading the list's posts in chronological order. Since cross-polinisation 
of threads is common here, this way I never misunderstand references to 
other posts from other threads).

However, Eudora's IMAP abilities are among the best I've seen so far (my 
main accounts are IMAP so this is necessary for me), and the ability to 
download only the mail headers is great to diminish the volume of the 
downloads (and downloading the body of the messages is extremely quick, as 
long as those are not HTML emails :))) ). Its filters are powerful, and I 
like the fact that its interface is not the ubiquitous 3-panel interface 
(used by Outlook and Thunderbird for instance), which I detest. In Eudora, 
each mail box is a separate child window, which you can position and size 
as you wish (I positioned mine for greater recognition and sized them for 
ease of reading). If you want the 3-panel interface, just maximise each 
mail box, and you won't see the difference compared to a true 3-panel 
interface. I like having the choice in my interface (it's the same reason 
why I prefer Opera's tabs to Mozilla's tabs. Mozilla's tabs are pure tabs, 
while in Opera you can unhook the tabs and make them into child windows. 
But if you don't, you just don't see the difference with true tabs. Once 
again, I prefer to have a choice rather than be blocked by the tyranny of 
the interface). So if the guys at Thunderbird decided to adopt the same GUI 
style as Eudora's, I would migrate immediately :) .

On the subject of mailing list vs. forum, I personally find forums to be a 
regression rather than a progress. My experience is that they hinder 
readability compared to mailing lists, and are a pain to browse for new 
posts. They are definitely not fit for such a community as ours. Also, the 
hinder choice: many people prefer to have threaded mail. I don't. With a 
forum, I wouldn't have a choice. At least, with a mailing list, the end 
user is in control of his interface. Once again, I vote in favour of choice 
over tyranny of the interface.

Christophe Grandsire.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

You need a straight mind to invent a twisted conlang.