[svlug] My escape from Kmail is featured in the 2/2012 issue of Linux Productivity Magazine

[Ivan Sergio Borgonovo]

On Sat, 18 Feb 2012 14:11:14 -0800
Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com> wrote:

> Steve, mutt _still_ works, by the way.  ;->

IMAP is nice.

Today even my paranoia can't find any good reason to become a
vi or mutt master (unless you already are).
These tools have 2 main advantages: low bandwidth need and
availability.
But you don't have to become a vi/mutt master to use vi or mutt
productively in the rare circumstances where you don't have
alternatives.

With the proliferation of mobile devices, screen size and interface
may be a more challenging constraints.

GUI tools have higher screen to brain bandwidth.
A finer organization of screen real estate, fonts, colours... helps
your brain to grasp information more efficiently.

On the other side there are two unfortunate coincidences:
- most GUI tools forget that a keyboard has generally higher
  bandwidth and expressivity than a mouse
- most GUI tools are monolithic programs that went to far from the
  *nix philosophy of glueing together several other tools

This generally translate into making them less scriptable, less
ductile and less "available".
You shouldn't need to get used to a different IDE when you switch
from programming in python to programming in heskel or when
switching from arm to avr. Your compile options shouldn't end in an
XML file that your compiler is not able to understand directly.

> (Me, I just stick with mutt under screen, running 24x7 on my
> receiving SMTP host.  Who needs an MRA when you can ssh in and
> read directly from a local mail spool?)

I haven't had the time to switch my habits from per-divided mail to
post-divided mail and my prejudices don't give me enough reasons to
try.

The advantage of one mail spool is you know where new mail is going
to arrive and you don't need to see a tree structure to navigate
your recent mails.

The advantages of having your mail pre-divided in folders are many,
procrastination alone is enough to justify this approach.

Sooner or later anyway you'll have to archive your email in folders.

What's missing for email nirvana is a more mature support for sieve
and IMAP subscriptions.

And no... there is no chance I'll wake up as a hipster developer
with a Mac.

-- 
Ivan Sergio Borgonovo
http://www.webthatworks.it