metamail

metamail

[Jake Colman]

Do I need to install the metamail to fully appreciate mime handling with
pgnus?  I guess I am confused as to what is supposed to be handled directly
by pgnus and how/when external viewers are supposed to be used.  I guess that 
if an external viewer is required, metamail provides it?

-- 
Jake Colman                     

Principia Partners LLC                  Phone: (201) 946-0300
Harborside Financial Center               Fax: (201) 946-0320
902 Plaza II                           Beeper: (800) 505-2795
Jersey City, NJ 07311                  E-mail: colman@ppllc.com
                                       E-mail: jcolman@jnc.com
                                          web: http://www.ppllc.com

Re: metamail

[Karl Kleinpaste]

Metamail is (should be) completely superfluous, and would probably
just get in the way.

Metamail is a MIME unpacker which will spawn viewers for each segment
appropriately.  But that is what pGnus is now doing.  Metamail doesn't
even do a particularly good job of it, considering that it doesn't
even inform the user of the existence of choices under
multipart/alternative specs.

(On a side note, I'm disturbed by the recent tendency to discuss "the"
everything.  This trend seems to have started with "the" gimp, rather
than just gimp, making me wonder if we're soon to start talking about
"the" emacs and "the" linux and heaven knows what else.  It's just
gimp, and emacs, and linux, and metamail.  It seems to me that these
are all names, not nouns; I'm not "the" Karl [especially since I'm not
unique with the name], I'm just Karl.)

Re: metamail

[François Pinard]

Karl Kleinpaste <karl@justresearch.com> writes:

> Metamail is a MIME unpacker which will spawn viewers for each segment
> appropriately.  Metamail doesn't even do a particularly good job of it,
> considering that it doesn't even inform the user of the existence of
> choices under multipart/alternative specs.

Maybe that `metamail' understands what MIME is a bit better than some of us.
It has been written by "the" (:-) Nathaniel Borenstein (sp?), this fellow
who designed MIME.  Maybe that `metamail' is not a masterpiece of programming
art, but it is nevertheless close enough to the original spirit of MIME.

-- 
François Pinard                            mailto:pinard@iro.umontreal.ca
Join the free Translation Project!    http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~pinard

Re: metamail

[Karl Kleinpaste]

I'm well aware of where metamail originated, and in fact I
experimented with the very first public release he made of it (with
related tools) in ¿1992?.  It is still the case that it's quite ugly
in some ways, and is incomplete, as we've found when looking for MIME
comparison points against Gnus.

Borenstein published a fair amount of commentary about having spent N
years working with things like CMU's Andrew Message System (a
seriously spiffy and capable system which supported advanced concepts
like embedded animation, as far back as the mid-1980s; I recall
watching him demo this kind of thing at the January 1988 Usenix Conf.)
and yet, much later, found himself back-porting MIME-related hooks
into ancient crufty mail handlers like UCB Mail because, as he
related, composition of such messages is Hard -- that one can spend a
great deal of time putting together even a short message when one is
trying to get the right presentation of graphic, animation, and text,
and that there is a "diminishing returns" factor involved, which
limited the AMS' ability to achieve penetration and acceptance.

I consider the deficiencies of metamail in particular to be an example
of the realization that effective rendering is apparently equally as
Hard as composition.

Re: metamail

[Jake Colman]

The usage of "the" in my case was a typo.  And I happen to agree with your
sentiments.


>>>>> "Karl" == Karl Kleinpaste <karl@justresearch.com> writes:

   Karl> (On a side note, I'm disturbed by the recent tendency to discuss
   Karl> "the" everything.  This trend seems to have started with "the"
   Karl> gimp, rather than just gimp, making me wonder if we're soon to
   Karl> start talking about "the" emacs and "the" linux and heaven knows
   Karl> what else.  It's just gimp, and emacs, and linux, and metamail.  It
   Karl> seems to me that these are all names, not nouns; I'm not "the" Karl
   Karl> [especially since I'm not unique with the name], I'm just Karl.)

-- 
Jake Colman                     

Principia Partners LLC                  Phone: (201) 946-0300
Harborside Financial Center               Fax: (201) 946-0320
902 Plaza II                           Beeper: (800) 505-2795
Jersey City, NJ 07311                  E-mail: colman@ppllc.com
                                       E-mail: jcolman@jnc.com
                                          web: http://www.ppllc.com

Re: metamail

[Steinar Bang]

>>>>> Karl Kleinpaste <karl@justresearch.com>:

> ... I'm not "the" Karl [especially since I'm not unique with the
> name], I'm just Karl.)

Hm... don't Germans to exactly that occasionally?  I belive I have
heard Germans say things like "der Karl", and from the context I think 
the usage has been pretty much the way people from up north in Norway, 
where I come from, would say something like "han Steinar" ("him
Steinar") when speaking about me.

Re: metamail

[Kai.Grossjohann]

Steinar Bang <sb@metis.no> writes:

  > Hm... don't Germans to exactly that occasionally?

Yes, it's colloquial.  It's considered a bit impolite, though.  Hm.
I use it.  What does that tell me about myself?  =8-)

kai
-- 
This gubblick contains many nonsklarkish English flutzpahs,
but the overall pluggandisp can be glorked from context. -- David Moser