Gnus Groupies (was Re: Organization (was: Earn No Big Bucks))

[Steven L Baur <steve@miranova.com>]

Hrvoje Niksic writes:

> What are/were `Gnus Groupies'?

>From the Gnus Memory division (why doesn't nnweb find this?):

Subject:      Re: about message mode
From:         Richard Mlynarik <mly@adoc.xerox.com>
Date:         1996/06/25
Message-Id:   <xcj20j3k211.fsf@adoc.xerox.com>
Newsgroups:   gnu.emacs.gnus
[More Headers]

   From: Sudish Joseph <sudish@vnet.ibm.com>
   Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.gnus
   Date: 20 Jun 1996 10:18:57 -0400

   ssjaaa@uta.fi writes:
   > What I mean here: it is important that users can get the "same old
   > look and feel", at least in some extent, otherwise the shift
   > is too radical to accept.
   Well, if said user has code that dabbles in the internals of GNUS,
   there's no way to support her.  Hmm, or maybe we might just package
   4.1 along with ding? :-)

mail-yank-ignored-headers, mail-yank-prefix, mail-setup-hook,
mail-default-headers, mail-citation-hook, are hardly "the internals of
GNUS": they're variables which have existed and have been advertised
as existing for more than a *decade*, but message.el is apparently too
wonderful and too new and too clever and too clean to bother with
details such as accomodating actual users (as opposed to beta-testers
and other gnus groupies who have nothing better to do than mess with
their init files all day long.)  There are about a dozen other such
variables.

Nor is send-mail-function an `internal' function.

Meanwhile, the new junk (message-citation-line-function,
gnus-message-archive-method, message-max-buffers) introduces worse
behaviour in incompatible fashion; such things should be turned off by
default.
   
At least we can be thankful that message.el deigns to look at -one-
predefined variable -- mail-header-separator !

I was pretty happy with the amazing job done with gnus 5.1, and in
particular with its upward-compatibility with old gnus (apart from the
hopeless, tasteless face fuckage induced by custom.el.)
5.2 is a big step back in accomodation to users.

-- Richard (I use it anyway.  What choice is there?)
     _________________________________________________________________

-- 
steve@miranova.com baur
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