Linux and fonts and Firefox and human-factors design

[Jeffry Smith]

On 11/2/06, Neil Joseph Schelly <neil at jenandneil.com> wrote:
>
> I'd just say the ability to change clients is not nearly as relevant as
> changing my access locations.  I can check my mail from my Treo, my laptop,
> my desktop, my webmail if I'm on a public terminal, etc. I am always looking
> at the same mail organized into the same folders by the same server-side
> scripting.

Funny, I do that all the time.  Pop, IMAP, can access from any
computer.  Or, if I can ssh into my home machine, can read the text
files with any text reader (thanks to grep/mh)
>
> As a bonus, if I do decide that Thunderbird is my new favorite mail client
> rather than KMail, I can switch easily.  Or if I decide to become a Mac user
> and KMail doesn't work there (I'm assuming it doesn't), my migration is far
> easier.  Further, if I just want to try and see what everyone thinks of
> Thunderbird because everyone says it's just so great, I can try it very
> trivially and stop just as trivially if I decide it's not for me.
>
>
Of course, both Pop and IMAP meet this criteria.


I get the impression that those speaking ill of IMAP in this conversation
> already know all the points that the pro-IMAP people are making though and
> are just pushing buttons.

Actually, the issue isn't good or ill of IMAP, it's your original
contention that one of the good things about it is it's client
independent:
> One of the reasons I exclusively use the IMAP protocol for email is the fact
> I can migrate my mailbox folder layouts to *any* IMAP client on different
> computers. With POP, you're kinda stuck with the computer and client you
> initially use.

Which, as Paul shows, isn't true.



> It's a rather silly proposition that someone would
> really want to use screen/pine through cygwin as their primary email client,
> or at least I hope it is.
> -N

Pine as primary, using screen/cygwin where needed.  (Pine is the
e-mail client, screen & ssh are a transport , cygwin is a fix for a
broken OS).

jeff