Tuesday, January 11, 2000, 7:28:19 PM, John wrote:
> I often alter these headers in the middle of message composition. This
> is convenient to do with a built-in (or tightly coupled) editor, less
> so with a completely external editor.
Conceded. OTOH, I, more often than not, want to pipe text to an external
filter, reformat text in a certain way, etc. IE, I'm willing to give up that
insignificant convenience for the larger convenience of having a more powerful
editor so the bulk of my editing time is reduced.
> So it goes out the door as soon as I close the editor. Great. At the moment
> the last thing I do is decide where the message will go (which often means
> to the trash!), in one step, and this is how I would like it to stay. Again,
> it needs very tight editor integration to do this with an external editor.
Then don't configure it to send immediately.
>> Then get the editor author to add those email specific items.
> Ah, I'll just get them added to Notepad. Won't be a minute!
Notepad, no. But try getting features added to open source editors in
active development.
Wait, I'm going about this argument the wrong way. Let me just put it
this way. Which are you more likely to get done... Getting an author of an
editor to put in modifications to make his editor more powerful or getting the
author of an email client to put in options into his editor to get it closer
to other editors in power?
The former is worried about only one thing, the editor. Putting in
capabilities that make it easy to use with email means his editor can have
wider use. The latter is worried about the email client first and foremost
and knows that a "good enough" editor is, well, "good enough."
Your argument for a scripting editor is moot. I've found that the editors
that I use don't need scripting. If I need scripting I just write a perl
script and pipe the text through that script. Why would I want an editor to
have utter and complete scripting when I could have a specialized scripting
language for that.
Wow, that fits my theme. Specialized tools for specialize purposes.
Editor for editing, spell checker for spell checking, email client for email,
scripting language for scripting. Each of those components is more powerful,
in my eyes, by creating the interfaces than reimplementing everything. That
is because I only need to learn one editor, one scripting language, one spell
checker, one email client. I can put them together to make something better
than if each of them tried to make everything else.
--
Steve C. Lamb | I'm your priest, I'm your shrink, I'm your
ICQ: 5107343 | main connection to the switchboard of souls.
-------------------------------+---------------------------------------------
--
--------------------------------------------------------------
View the TBUDL archive at http://tbudl.thebat.dutaint.com
To send a message to the list moderation team double click here:
<mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To Unsubscribe from TBUDL, double click here and send the message:
<mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
--------------------------------------------------------------
