On Mon, Jan 10, 2000 at 06:25:00PM -0800, Jason Thompson wrote:
> Usenet, on the other hand...Well, I know none of the technical aspects
> of Usenet, but I've seen that MS Outlook smoothly integrates news and
> mail into one client. I've always liked Outlook for that, although
> that's the only thing. :) So, it seems to me that usenet shouldn't be
> too much to add to TB. And if TB v2.0 has usenet in plugin form, then of
> course you can just unload the plugin if you wish!
That's just it, though, Lookout! "smoothly integrates news and mail into
one client" but it doesn't offer everything a news client does. News is not
mail and mail is not news no matter how alike they look to the layman and how
close the specifications are.
There is no such thing as multi-post binaries in email.
Newsgroups aren't to anyone. They are much more broadcast in nature. As
a result, the way you filter through the data is different. For example, one
of the most effective filtering schemes for news is scoring. I've yet to see
an "integrated" email/news client implement scoring for news since they treat
it as "just another mail folder." Scoring doesn't work as well for mail.
How, exactly, will the client handle multiple news feeds, if at all? Most
email clients which do it treat the streams separatel. However, it is common
practice in usenet to cross-feed to get a complete feed. There is no
guarentee that a message will get to all points equally. Again, since news
isn't too anyone and a newsgroup is really more like a broadcast more than
anything getting news from multiple streams and merging the articles (removing
dupes) provides the best feed. This is something most news clients don't do
and something an email client team trying to play news client programmer will
most likely never aspire to.
Of course, they can do it, and, as someone pointed out, have it
implemented well enough to be "good enough." That is a problem, though. We
have plenty of "good enough" news readers. We have plenty "good enough" web
browsers. We have plenty "good enough" email clients. It seems what *ALL*
email client programmers have missed (and web client programmers, and news
client programmers) is that there is a subset that wants an exceptional email
client *and* an exceptional news client *and* an exceptional web client but
don't want it all in once since they understand it has proven, thus far, to be
impossible to do!
Yet we still have web clients doing mail and news. We still have email
clients wanting to grab "discussion boards" (news). We still have news
clients still wanting to do mail.
--
Steve C. Lamb | I'm your priest, I'm your shrink, I'm your
ICQ: 5107343 | main connection to the switchboard of souls.
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