Re: Do we need a way to moderate mailing lists?

Paul Förster <paul.foerster@gmail.com> writes:

> Hi Adrian,
>
> I'm on a Mac w/ Big Sur (macOS 11.1) and use Apple Mail. I've been on Macs since 2003. Apple Mail is simple to use
andI love it for exactly that. But Apple Mail has everything I expect a mail client to have, it does not allow a couple
ofthings which other mail clients might have. Some people hate it for exactly that. I set Mail to always compose in
plaintext but there is no way of manipulating incoming mails other than that automatic displaying remote content (HTML
links,etc.) can (and should) be turned off. 
>
> So I sometimes resort to either hit cmd-opt-u to see the mail text raw source, or better yet, just hit reply and then
dropthe reply after reading. As I set composing to plain text, it will convert any quoted parts. Sometimes, I just
copy/pastethe whole mail for reading over to TextMate, which is also sub-optimal but obviously also gives me
non-proportionalfont reading. 
>
> Still, this is somewhat cumbersome as I have to do that for each mail individually. Thank god, this doesn't happen
toooften. Yet, it's still annoying enough. 
>

I've used a number of GUI mail clients, including Apple Mail. However, I
find still the fastest, most feature rich and powerful client is the
text based client mutt. My other favourite is mu4e (Emacs client). While
Apple Mail has reasonable keyboard shortcuts, mutt and mu4e can be fully
keyboard driven and both have great (but different) abilities for
customisation and dealing with large amounts of mail. The thing I hate
most (and there is a lot to hate) with Outlook is the dependence on
using the mouse for many operations. Being able to preview, sort, move,
delete, messages and threads just using the keyboard makes dealing with
mail much easier to deal with. Having a client which can do
sophisticated sorting, flagging and searching messages/threads is essential and
being able to easily automate where possible really helps.

Highly recommend a mutt and imap combination. Your not locked into any
particular mail folder format, can still access things via mobile
devices and can process messages fast and efficiently.

>> That is a learning curve thing. Many people don't know that copy and paste exists for terminals/GUI's/etc. Most
people,once they are pointed in the right direction, will change that habit. That is why I would not advocate dropping
nonplain text attachments. Take this as a teaching moment and explain the reason why text is a benefit. 
>
> I guess, they only change their behavior because copying/pasting some text is easier to do than creating a windowshot
withaligning the frame manually, etc. But whatever the reason, thank god, some people are willing to learn that if
beingtold. 
>

It is easy to forget the different experience levels and sophistication
of users. I once had to help resolve a problem a developer was having
with a database. I asked him to send me the exact error message. He
moaned and said that was a real hassle. I couldn't understand why he
found that so difficult to do. I decided to get him to show me his
workflow.

When the error occurred, he would take a screen shot of his window, send
it to the printer, wait for the printer to send back a PDF and then send
the issue with the PDF attached.

He was amazed when I showed him all he needed to do was highlight the
error message, copy it and paste it into the message. This guy was one
of the senior developers on the team.

I switched employers a few weeks later.

--
Tim Cross