[Users] [Bulk] Re: Claws config needs much better documentation

[Michael Gmelin]

On Tue, 31 Jul 2012 10:40:38 +0530
Sitaram Chamarty <sitaramc at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Tue, Jul 31, 2012 at 8:44 AM, Michael Gmelin <freebsd at grem.de>
> wrote:
> > On Tue, 31 Jul 2012 06:58:39 +0530
> > Sitaram Chamarty <sitaramc at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> On Tue, Jul 31, 2012 at 6:03 AM, Michael Gmelin <freebsd at grem.de>
> >> wrote:
> >>
> >> > In general to me it's still more of a philosophical question - do
> >> > you want to make the software behave like other mail clients do
> >> > by
> >>
> >> If the devs don't want to make this change fine, but it should be
> >> for reasons specific to the feature, not "do you want to make the
> >> software behave like other mail clients do...".
> >>
> >
> > I think that Claws is better with this feature enabled. Therefore it
> > should be the default, so users learn about it. I'm not certain if
> > you actually think that this is a useful feature at all or not, your
> > argument was that it might surprise users in a bad way - while I
> > think having to move mail once from Trash to Inbox is not a big
> > deal and I got surprised in a good way.  I also think that this
> > feature could be improved, but not by disabling it by default (and
> > it seems like it used to be implemented differenly, which makes a
> > lot of sense).
> >
> > Brief overview of the debate:
> >
> > 1. Is the feature useful to a significant number of users?
> >    I think "yes", you think ?
> 
> On low bandwidth networks, certainly.  On that note, maybe the devs
> can consider moving this to the per-account options, with a note
> telling the user to read [somewhere].  Keep the current default but
> now it's a little more "in your face" (since account setup options are
> more likely to be looked at than general preferences.

Well, to me this is not about low bandwidth at all (fortunately I'm
hardly ever have to read email on low bandwidth these days - well I
still am, but that usually means a video isn't playing in HD
without buffering, so really not an issue). As I wrote earlier, to me
it is a real usability advantage.

> 
> > 2. Is it a bad surprise or even dangerous?
> >    I think "no", you think "yes"
> 
> Yes.  Incidentally the only one I found so far in claws.
> 
> On the other hand, if you want to use it as a twit filter to keep away
> clueless users then that's fine.  Put in some warnings to warn them
> off and then tell them take a hike if they complain.
> 
> [I'm not against such a policy.  I actually say stuff like that in
> several parts of the documentation for gitolite; not everything needs
> to be newbie-friendly].

Gitolite makes my life a lot easier, thanks for providing it!

> 
> > 3. Should features be disabled by default to make migration easier
> > for users
> >    We both think "if it's a bad surprise", but we seem to have
> > different definitions of what "bad" means - to me this is an
> > inconvenience for a migrating user and I don't think a program
> > should sacrifice its default feature set to avoid inconvenience for
> > new users.
> 
> I disagree but that's fine.  See above on making it more prominent at
> least.
> 
> > This *is* specific to this feature - if the feature in question
> > was that claws by default erased your HOME directory on invalid
> > password entry I would strongly suggest to not make this the
> > default.
> 
> This would be a valid point if the example was a feature that *does*
> (or even *could**, in future) exist in claws as an option.  We're
> debating default behaviour, not what would clearly be a bug.  As it
> is, you're just indulging in reductio ad absurdium.

This was giving an example of a feature everyone obviously considers
dangerous, not a stylistic device. I could actually imagine such a
feature to be useful in certain environments though (granted, usually
something like this is done by the device running the program and not
the email client itself). Anyway, I hope you got my point.

> 
> > At the same time the general question of where you draw the line
> > between inconvenience, bad surprise and dangerous is also part of
> > this discussion. It's different for every project and depends on
> > the project goals, target audience, if/who you want to compete
> > with, etc.
> >
> > I guess we can agree to disagree :)
> 
> Why does the word "compete" even come up here?  Stick to goals and
> target audience.

Well, some projects do, e.g. Mozilla Firefox - even though it's
open source - is trying to compete with commercial products (therefore
"if") - it's an important factor that has a huge impact on the
resulting software's look and feel. This of course intersects with
target audience to a certain degree, but changes the spirit of
the project.

> 
> > [removed comments, I'm sorry if the discussion seemed like a waste
> > of your time].
> 
> This email you just sent wasn't a waste of my time to read/respond ;-)

This whole discussion was full of misunderstanding, reading between
the lines (or lack of). Confusing general statements with specifics
and vice versa. A beautiful example of written communication gone wrong.

Thanks for your time/effort though, I enjoyed it for the most part.

(I'm pretty certain that doing
"grep always_show_message_when_selected ~/.claws-mail/clawsrc" 
on our machines yields different results :)


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-- 
Michael Gmelin