How to set up gnus email for novices with little mastery.

How to set up gnus email for novices with little mastery.

[Don Saklad]

How to set up gnus email for novices with little mastery.
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&threadm=5iacv6x2cq.fsf%40fencepost.gnu.org&prev=/groups%3Fhl%3Den%26lr%3D%26ie%3DUTF-8%26group%3Dgnu.emacs.gnus

Re: How to set up gnus email for novices with little mastery.

[Tim McNamara]

Don Saklad <dsaklad@gnu.org> writes:

> The argument looked arrogant because the whole idea of computer
> software technology is to simplify !

No, the whole idea of computer software technology is to enable the
performance of tasks that were heretofore cumbersome or difficult.
Computers are great at repeating tasks that would drive a human nuts,
and rapidly performing time consuming calculations.

What you are talking about is actually the human interface aspect of
an operating system.  The purpose of the interface is to permit the
user to operate the software; modern GUI interfaces simplify this
dramatically but at the expense of flexibility and power.  The Unix
command line offers useful abilities that GUIs do not, for example,
but takes some actual knowledge rather than an intuitive approach.
Operating systems that allow both offer the best of both worlds.

Emacs and Gnus are not simple applications.  They are extraordinarily
powerful, arguably Gnus is the most powerful newsreader/mail client
available. Many people do not need all the power at their disposal
(I'm one of those, but I use Gnus anyway).  I think there are some
things that could be done to make it easier on newbies, but by the
same token that steep learning curve results in rapid mastery.  That's
what steep learning curves do.

Re: How to set up gnus email for novices with little mastery.

[Dan Muller]

asjo@koldfront.dk (Adam Sjøgren) writes:

> On Mon, 04 Oct 2004 18:20:49 GMT, Don wrote:
>
>> The argument looked arrogant because the whole idea of computer
>> software technology is to simplify !
>
> Let say someone wants to boil some water for a nice cup of tea.
>
> Two ways of boiling water are putting a kettle on the stove, and
> heating up the water with a blowtorch.

First thought that came to mind: Put the kettle on the stove, _and_
use the blowtorch!

Re: How to set up gnus email for novices with little mastery.

[Dan Muller]

Tim McNamara <timmcn@bitstream.net> writes:

> Dan Muller <itd98ds02@sneakemail.com> writes:
>
>> asjo@koldfront.dk (Adam Sjøgren) writes:
>>
>>> On Mon, 04 Oct 2004 18:20:49 GMT, Don wrote:
>>>
>>>> The argument looked arrogant because the whole idea of computer
>>>> software technology is to simplify !
>>>
>>> Let say someone wants to boil some water for a nice cup of tea.
>>>
>>> Two ways of boiling water are putting a kettle on the stove, and
>>> heating up the water with a blowtorch.
>>
>> First thought that came to mind: Put the kettle on the stove, _and_
>> use the blowtorch!
>
> The belt and suspenders approach.  Sort of like Mac OS X!

Hey, now, don't mix metaphors. This is about brewing tea faster, not
keeping pants up. :)

How to set up gnus email for novices with little mastery.

[Don Saklad]

A relative novice using emacs rmail does not have enough mastery to
set up the dotfile for gnus email nor to do whatever other
accompanying tasks to get gnus email up and running. What hints, tips
and pointers are there for such users interested in trying gnus email
that do not require more than a few moments of study through a steep
that learning curve so perceived ?...

The existing instructive informational links and newsgroups do assume
a relatively advanced or intermediate level of user.

Re: How to set up gnus email for novices with little mastery.

[Ted Zlatanov]

On 29 Sep 2004, dsaklad@nestle.csail.mit.edu wrote:

> How do you figure out backend neither having any experience in
> thinking about it nor even knowing the significance of backend ?...
> 
> Backend appears too complicated a thing for many people with no
> mastery or it would require dedicated study, too steep a learning
> curve of more than a mere few moments.

Backends are explained in the Gnus manual.  Reading the manual is a
requirement for using Gnus, you can't just expect it to "work" (there
are other news readers that do that).

Gnus will have setup assistants one day.  It doesn't now, so setup is
a manual chore.  If you or anyone else would like to work on the setup
assistants, that would help - they are at the embryo stage now.

Ted

Re: How to set up gnus email for novices with little mastery.

[Tim McNamara]

Don Saklad <dsaklad@nestle.csail.mit.edu> writes:

> Thank you Tim McNamara !
>
> How do you figure out backend neither having any experience in
> thinking about it nor even knowing the significance of backend ?...
>
> Backend appears too complicated a thing for many people with no
> mastery or it would require dedicated study, too steep a learning
> curve of more than a mere few moments.

I don't know if there is a default backend for Gnus per se, I just
went with nnmail by chance, basically. I'm perfectly satisfied with
it.  The upside of Gnus is that it's very powerful with many many
options.  The downside of Gnus is that it's very powerful with many
many options.  While it's not user-unfriendly IMHO, it is not beginner
friendly.  It requires thinking about things that one may not know
how to think about yet.  

This is complicated by Emacs and Gnus using terminology (hooks, yank,
kill-ring, etc.) that is not shared with non-Emacs applications or
operating systems (Emacs predating most of them by a good many years).
Indeed, I think that's the steepest part of the learning curve.  If
one wanted to make Emacs more accessible to most users, the
terminology should be revised to be more consistent with what Windows
and Mac users are familiar with- cutting, pasting, clipboard, etc.  Of
course, the other side of the coin is that this would baffle and
obfuscate the entire installed user base of Emacs!

Users migrating to Gnus and Emacs from other Unix applications might
have an easier time than those of us coming from Windows or Mac OS/OS
X since we don't edit preference files directly and aren't used to
doing this.  For GUI-babies like me, whose first computer was a Mac
512Ke bought in 1986, having a nice little window (buffer) in which to
enter the relevant server and user information, which would then write
to .gnus, would make things much simpler.  I would think that the
Customize menu would be able to accommodate this.  BTW, it should be
easier to navigate to the Gnus customization group with the Options
menu- perhaps the menu should automatically display a "Customize
<active mode>" item?  This would prevent having to hunt through the
various Customize groups hierarchies.

If this isn't possible, I would think that one could set up a sample
.gnus for new users to edit, using nnmail (or nnimap, as the case may
be).  This would get them started quickly with a backend that's
pretty easy to use.

Re: How to set up gnus email for novices with little mastery.

[Don Saklad]

The difficulty with dotfiles is presuming that novice users with no
mastery can set up the code in the dotfile easily.

For those with mastery what is really needed is an automatic set up
type of thing requiring no previous experience. The limits of
knowledge for those with mastery extends to not being able to make
it ever easier and straight forward.