Re: Gnus v5.4.62 is released

[Jens Lautenbacher <jens@metrix.de>]

Hrvoje Niksic <hniksic@srce.hr> writes:

> Jens Lautenbacher <jens@metrix.de> writes:
> 
> > > Logical behaviour includes not creating a 100K or so .newsrc.eld
> > > by default.
> > 
> > I beg to differ. from the beginners point it's still a bit difficult
> > to set up a gnus environment.
> 
> Exactly.  Which is why Gnus should provide the most palatable
> behaviour by default.  And I still think this category includes /not/
> creating 100K+ .newsrc.eld by default.

Disk space? 100k+? even 300k wouldn't matter. 
 
> > Looking at other news readers (blasphemy, I know) I can simply list
> > all the groups and enter them.
> 
> You can do it in Gnus, too.  Commands like `10 A T' will connect to
> the server, get the list of groups and list them.  I don't need the
> list every day.  And a beginner certainly doesn't need it in his
> .newsrc.eld -- by default.

Ach Quatsch!

You can't be serious suggesting that it's a user friendly behaviour to
need one time something like 10 A T and some other time just use A k
or A A to list "simply all groups", depending on the setting of some
varibale and depending if some funny internal list/file is
build/retrieved.

> > But it's extremely non-logical if suddenly I can't access the whole
> > feed anymore (...)
> 
> Sure you can -- see above.

No you can't; see above. In some moon reader it's one keystroke to get 
all groups. I don't care as a user if the program caches this list or not
if it's only fast enougth. The reason that tin can just forget about
all this is that it spends almost no time with parsing, while gnus....


> > -- and even at a fast scientific internet access with a fast computer
> > it still takes damned long to load the whole active file from the
> > server.
> 
> That's what all these others newsreaders do, in case you didn't know.

I know. I'm taking about moron newsreaders, I don't state I'm one.

> > Besides that a newbie will not know what to do, and will switch to
> > tin after 5 minutes without getting what he wants (yeah yeah, RTFM,
> > I know. _I_ do, but we all know our users).
> 
> And tin will do the exact same thing.

But I don't care because it does whatever it does fast.

> > The thousands of different listing/loading/browsing commands don't
> > help either, as they are layed out in a totally flat way: there is
> > no "hirarchy" build of them with "general" commands which do the
> > right thing most of the time and "expert" commands,
> > unfortunately. Even the menu doesn't suggest such a hirarchy.
> 
> Feel free to suggest a better layout of commands.  I am sure Lars
> would be happy to make Gnus equally usable to a totall dummy-type
> beginner as well as RSI-prone-10-keys-per-second-control-meta-alt
> expert.
> 
> > Conclusion: Follow the principle of least surprise,
> 
> I sounds like a broken record, but I'll say it again: the principle of
> least surprise includes not creating giant files by default.  If
> necessary, the manual should be updated to explain the available
> commands better.
> 
> If a person doesn't want to even glance at the manual, he'll be better
> off with tin anyway.