Using Thunderbird for Usenet

[John Rumm]

Re: changed subject for experiement on threading orders

On 27/05/2010 17:52, BillW50 wrote:

>>> Well one, the rule isn't always being applied in huge newsgroups. It
>>> is like TB is getting confused. Worse, it is having a problem
>>> reading all of the headers as well. As the status bar instead of
>>> going from left to right is jumping all over the place. This
>>> newsgroup on this server has over 12,000 posts, btw.
>>
>> One thing to watch is that message filters apply to individual groups
>> and not a news server as a whole, so you may need to duplicate some
>> filters between groups.
>
> Oh? Maybe that is where I went wrong. Seemed to work well for the
> newsgroups already there. But new ones later doesn't seem to be working
> correctly. Boy that is a lot of work with lots of newsgroups.

If you call up the list of filters you should see a different list
depending on which group is selected. In TB3 you can use the news server
drop down box to also pick the relevant group - you will note there is a
sub menu that splits out from server.

You can cheat a little if you want some filters duplicated, since all
TBs config files are plain text, you can pop into the News folder in
your profile and you will see a .dat file for each group - so for this
one I have uk.d-i-y.dat and in there are all the filter rules. You can
either copy this whole file to <new_group_name>.dat to duplicate them
for another group or cut'n'past individual rules in a normal text editor.

>>> So maybe people can understand why I don't find TB (or other ones I
>>> have tried) very attractive. As OE6 works well and very quick. And
>>> you can search past read posts very quickly as well.
>>
>> Each to his own I guess.
>
> OE seems so very efficient compared to other programs. As other programs
> seem to make the user go through so much work and it really shouldn't be
> that way.

Oddly I find OE hugely frustrating - it must be it just does not work
the way I think! Probably tells you something about either it or me


--
Cheers,

John.

/=================================================================\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\=================================================================/

 

[BillW50]

Re: changed subject for experiement on threading orders

On 5/27/2010 3:41 PM, John Rumm wrote:
> On 27/05/2010 17:52, BillW50 wrote:
>
>>>> Well one, the rule isn't always being applied in huge newsgroups. It
>>>> is like TB is getting confused. Worse, it is having a problem
>>>> reading all of the headers as well. As the status bar instead of
>>>> going from left to right is jumping all over the place. This
>>>> newsgroup on this server has over 12,000 posts, btw.
>>>
>>> One thing to watch is that message filters apply to individual groups
>>> and not a news server as a whole, so you may need to duplicate some
>>> filters between groups.
>>
>> Oh? Maybe that is where I went wrong. Seemed to work well for the
>> newsgroups already there. But new ones later doesn't seem to be working
>> correctly. Boy that is a lot of work with lots of newsgroups.
>
> If you call up the list of filters you should see a different list
> depending on which group is selected. In TB3 you can use the news server
> drop down box to also pick the relevant group - you will note there is a
> sub menu that splits out from server.

Yes I see it.

> You can cheat a little if you want some filters duplicated, since all
> TBs config files are plain text, you can pop into the News folder in
> your profile and you will see a .dat file for each group - so for this
> one I have uk.d-i-y.dat and in there are all the filter rules. You can
> either copy this whole file to <new_group_name>.dat to duplicate them
> for another group or cut'n'past individual rules in a normal text editor.

Oh that is very handy! Thanks!

>>>> So maybe people can understand why I don't find TB (or other ones I
>>>> have tried) very attractive. As OE6 works well and very quick. And
>>>> you can search past read posts very quickly as well.
>>>
>>> Each to his own I guess.
>>
>> OE seems so very efficient compared to other programs. As other programs
>> seem to make the user go through so much work and it really shouldn't be
>> that way.
>
> Oddly I find OE hugely frustrating - it must be it just does not work
> the way I think! Probably tells you something about either it or me

I can see and understand this. As There is the MS way of doing things
and then there is the everybody else way of doing things. They are two
completely different systems of doing things. And doing it the MS way
does take a bit of a learning curve. And it is much harder the more you
know of the other ways. In the long run though, I find it far more
productive.

One really annoying thing about OE was quoting. Although there is
OE-QuoteFix which has taken care of that one. And I won't personally use
OE without it.

http://home.in.tum.de/~jain/software/oe-quotefix/

--
Bill
Thunderbird Portable 3.0 (20091130)

 

[BillW50]

On 5/27/2010 6:28 AM, BillW50 wrote:
> In news:htkrr2$roo$1@news.eternal-september.org,
> ~misfit~ typed on Thu, 27 May 2010 16:188 +1200:
>> Somewhere on teh intarwebs BillW50 wrote:
>> [snip]
>>> But I have Thunderbird set to not to
>>> download message bodies. So maybe that is why. OE6 can be set not to
>>> download message bodies either. But it stores them automatically if
>>> up opened them once or have them set as being watched. I like that a
>>> lot. Probably not a good idea if you have Internet access all of the
>>> time and are tight on disk space too.
>>
>> Going slightly away from the subject here, I use Tbird as my email
>> client and it really annoys me that, after it asks me if I want to
>> download remote content in an email, it doesn't store it, not even
>> for that session.
>> So if I'm checking prices for components in a weekly 'specials' email
>> from a supplier (I tend to keep each weekly email in my inbox until I
>> get the next one from the same company, then I delete last week's
>> one) and click to another email next time I want to look back at that
>> email again it re-downloads all of the graphical (etcetera) content.
>> That can be a real PITA if you're off line at the time or have limied
>> conection as some organisations like to send lots of pretty pictures
>> in their (or linked to their) emails. It can chew through data pretty
>> quickly.
>
> You need to setup whatever folder(s) you want for offline reading. Then
> it will store them on the computer.

Besides selecting whole folders, you can download starred and selected
messages too under File -> Offline. So to download all watched in a
newsgroup, you have to view only unread watched and select them all and
then download. Nothing as nice as OE, but somewhat usable.

--
Bill
Thunderbird Portable 3.0 (20091130)

 

[John Rumm]

Re: changed subject for experiement on threading orders

On 27/05/2010 23:17, BillW50 wrote:

>>>> Each to his own I guess.
>>>
>>> OE seems so very efficient compared to other programs. As other programs
>>> seem to make the user go through so much work and it really shouldn't be
>>> that way.
>>
>> Oddly I find OE hugely frustrating - it must be it just does not work
>> the way I think! Probably tells you something about either it or me
>
> I can see and understand this. As There is the MS way of doing things
> and then there is the everybody else way of doing things. They are two
> completely different systems of doing things. And doing it the MS way
> does take a bit of a learning curve. And it is much harder the more you
> know of the other ways. In the long run though, I find it far more
> productive.

I suspect its down to the way MS focus group test stuff and observe how
users use things. As a result they often come at problems a different
way or leave out subtle bits of functionality that some find confusing.
It can make things easier to learn for novice users, but frequently also
frustrates power users. The office "ribbon" being a good example. Users
with no exposure to office style apps often find it easier to learn, but
anyone used to another way of doing it (including previous users of MS
office) find it difficult.

(kind of like the opposite of Adobe with say photoshop - they will often
go about a common feature in a way that seems more complicated than the
others, but also in a way that opens up a whole new layer of extra power
and flexibility for those who invest the time and effort really getting
to understand what they are doing).

> One really annoying thing about OE was quoting. Although there is
> OE-QuoteFix which has taken care of that one. And I won't personally use
> OE without it.
>
> http://home.in.tum.de/~jain/software/oe-quotefix/

Yup agreed, that makes a huge improvement. Not sure if it fixes the
phantom attachment problem though?

--
Cheers,

John.

/=================================================================\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\=================================================================/

 

[~misfit~]

Somewhere on teh intarwebs BillW50 wrote:
> In news:htkrr2$roo$1@news.eternal-september.org,
> ~misfit~ typed on Thu, 27 May 2010 16:188 +1200:
>> Somewhere on teh intarwebs BillW50 wrote:
>> [snip]
>>> But I have Thunderbird set to not to
>>> download message bodies. So maybe that is why. OE6 can be set not to
>>> download message bodies either. But it stores them automatically if
>>> up opened them once or have them set as being watched. I like that a
>>> lot. Probably not a good idea if you have Internet access all of the
>>> time and are tight on disk space too.
>>
>> Going slightly away from the subject here, I use Tbird as my email
>> client and it really annoys me that, after it asks me if I want to
>> download remote content in an email, it doesn't store it, not even
>> for that session.
>> So if I'm checking prices for components in a weekly 'specials' email
>> from a supplier (I tend to keep each weekly email in my inbox until I
>> get the next one from the same company, then I delete last week's
>> one) and click to another email next time I want to look back at that
>> email again it re-downloads all of the graphical (etcetera) content.
>> That can be a real PITA if you're off line at the time or have limied
>> conection as some organisations like to send lots of pretty pictures
>> in their (or linked to their) emails. It can chew through data pretty
>> quickly.
>
> You need to setup whatever folder(s) you want for offline reading.
> Then it will store them on the computer.

Yeah, I looked at that but it seems that it would then download remote
content for every message. I don't want to do that, some of the weekly
emails I get, if I'm not in need of their wares that week, I delete without
reading / downloading the 'remote content'.

Oh well, it's better than the last email client I was using until the end of
last year; Calypso 3. That is abandonware that did everything I wanted until
I needed to use SSL for one or more of the accounts I check and it doesn't
do SSL.
--
Shaun.

"When we dream.... that's just our brains defragmenting" G Jackson.

 

[BillW50]

Re: changed subject for experiement on threading orders

On 5/27/2010 59 PM, John Rumm wrote:
> On 27/05/2010 23:17, BillW50 wrote:
>
>>>>> Each to his own I guess.
>>>>
>>>> OE seems so very efficient compared to other programs. As other
>>>> programs
>>>> seem to make the user go through so much work and it really
>>>> shouldn't be
>>>> that way.
>>>
>>> Oddly I find OE hugely frustrating - it must be it just does not work
>>> the way I think! Probably tells you something about either it or me
>>
>> I can see and understand this. As There is the MS way of doing things
>> and then there is the everybody else way of doing things. They are two
>> completely different systems of doing things. And doing it the MS way
>> does take a bit of a learning curve. And it is much harder the more you
>> know of the other ways. In the long run though, I find it far more
>> productive.
>
> I suspect its down to the way MS focus group test stuff and observe how
> users use things. As a result they often come at problems a different
> way or leave out subtle bits of functionality that some find confusing.
> It can make things easier to learn for novice users, but frequently also
> frustrates power users. The office "ribbon" being a good example. Users
> with no exposure to office style apps often find it easier to learn, but
> anyone used to another way of doing it (including previous users of MS
> office) find it difficult.
>
> (kind of like the opposite of Adobe with say photoshop - they will often
> go about a common feature in a way that seems more complicated than the
> others, but also in a way that opens up a whole new layer of extra power
> and flexibility for those who invest the time and effort really getting
> to understand what they are doing).

There is a lot of truth to what you say. And the MS way can cause
problems to the power users. But then again, there is usually
undocumented solutions to those problems. So that is really a tough call
I agree.

But get this, I remember there was a survey about office suites. And I
don't remember the exact number, but it was like only 20% of the
features was known among business users. I would have guessed 80%, but
no. So I guess the masses don't really use most of the features of a
given application anyway.

I think MS knows this too. And I believe they use this to their
advantage. So we end up with either the MS way and/or the other way. And
since most people it seems don't use all or even most of the features of
an application, the MS way is easier for most.

>> One really annoying thing about OE was quoting. Although there is
>> OE-QuoteFix which has taken care of that one. And I won't personally use
>> OE without it.
>>
>> http://home.in.tum.de/~jain/software/oe-quotefix/
>
> Yup agreed, that makes a huge improvement. Not sure if it fixes the
> phantom attachment problem though?

Phantom attachment? Is that the same as that syntax error in the MIME
attachment that had hidden it in OE? And when the user opened the email
(or newsgroup post I suppose) OE didn't see or show it but it would
automatically run it in the background?

Well AFAIK this was fixed long ago. Even then AFAIK the following would
foil this. One was to view messages in plain text. And secondly (now the
default) was to treat attachments in the restricted zone instead of the
Internet zone. And the restricted zone would warn you before OE does
anything stupid.

The other problem that I recall about OE was as attachment could claim
it was something normally harmless like a txt file or something in the
MIME header. And when you open it up, it could be totally different and
could be really an exe file for example and Windows would execute it.

I believe this has been fixed too. But the work around is and is
probably still a very good idea anyway is to save the attachment. And
the name better end up as a txt type for example. If it isn't, something
is wrong.

--
Bill
Thunderbird Portable 3.0 (20091130)

 

[BillW50]

On 5/27/2010 6:18 PM, ~misfit~ wrote:
> Somewhere on teh intarwebs BillW50 wrote:
>> In news:htkrr2$roo$1@news.eternal-september.org,
>> ~misfit~ typed on Thu, 27 May 2010 16:188 +1200:
>>> Somewhere on teh intarwebs BillW50 wrote:
>>> [snip]
>>>> But I have Thunderbird set to not to
>>>> download message bodies. So maybe that is why. OE6 can be set not to
>>>> download message bodies either. But it stores them automatically if
>>>> up opened them once or have them set as being watched. I like that a
>>>> lot. Probably not a good idea if you have Internet access all of the
>>>> time and are tight on disk space too.
>>>
>>> Going slightly away from the subject here, I use Tbird as my email
>>> client and it really annoys me that, after it asks me if I want to
>>> download remote content in an email, it doesn't store it, not even
>>> for that session.
>>> So if I'm checking prices for components in a weekly 'specials' email
>>> from a supplier (I tend to keep each weekly email in my inbox until I
>>> get the next one from the same company, then I delete last week's
>>> one) and click to another email next time I want to look back at that
>>> email again it re-downloads all of the graphical (etcetera) content.
>>> That can be a real PITA if you're off line at the time or have limied
>>> conection as some organisations like to send lots of pretty pictures
>>> in their (or linked to their) emails. It can chew through data pretty
>>> quickly.
>>
>> You need to setup whatever folder(s) you want for offline reading.
>> Then it will store them on the computer.
>
> Yeah, I looked at that but it seems that it would then download remote
> content for every message. I don't want to do that, some of the weekly
> emails I get, if I'm not in need of their wares that week, I delete without
> reading / downloading the 'remote content'.
>
> Oh well, it's better than the last email client I was using until the end of
> last year; Calypso 3. That is abandonware that did everything I wanted until
> I needed to use SSL for one or more of the accounts I check and it doesn't
> do SSL.

You saw my later post that you can select them manually too, right? If
possible, I can see selecting the view of the messages you want to
download (like unread watched for example) and then selecting them all
should work pretty well (well that example is already there in Offline,
but you get the idea).

--
Bill
Thunderbird Portable 3.0 (20091130)

 

[John Rumm]

Re: changed subject for experiement on threading orders

On 28/05/2010 00:49, BillW50 wrote:
> On 5/27/2010 59 PM, John Rumm wrote:
>> On 27/05/2010 23:17, BillW50 wrote:
>>
>>>>>> Each to his own I guess.
>>>>>
>>>>> OE seems so very efficient compared to other programs. As other
>>>>> programs
>>>>> seem to make the user go through so much work and it really
>>>>> shouldn't be
>>>>> that way.
>>>>
>>>> Oddly I find OE hugely frustrating - it must be it just does not work
>>>> the way I think! Probably tells you something about either it or me
>>>
>>> I can see and understand this. As There is the MS way of doing things
>>> and then there is the everybody else way of doing things. They are two
>>> completely different systems of doing things. And doing it the MS way
>>> does take a bit of a learning curve. And it is much harder the more you
>>> know of the other ways. In the long run though, I find it far more
>>> productive.
>>
>> I suspect its down to the way MS focus group test stuff and observe how
>> users use things. As a result they often come at problems a different
>> way or leave out subtle bits of functionality that some find confusing.
>> It can make things easier to learn for novice users, but frequently also
>> frustrates power users. The office "ribbon" being a good example. Users
>> with no exposure to office style apps often find it easier to learn, but
>> anyone used to another way of doing it (including previous users of MS
>> office) find it difficult.
>>
>> (kind of like the opposite of Adobe with say photoshop - they will often
>> go about a common feature in a way that seems more complicated than the
>> others, but also in a way that opens up a whole new layer of extra power
>> and flexibility for those who invest the time and effort really getting
>> to understand what they are doing).
>
> There is a lot of truth to what you say. And the MS way can cause
> problems to the power users. But then again, there is usually
> undocumented solutions to those problems. So that is really a tough call
> I agree.
>
> But get this, I remember there was a survey about office suites. And I
> don't remember the exact number, but it was like only 20% of the
> features was known among business users. I would have guessed 80%, but
> no. So I guess the masses don't really use most of the features of a
> given application anyway.

Indeed! Computer/Technology journalist the late Guy Kewney had a saying
of computer software some years back along the lines of "People are in
the habit of demanding tomorrows technology today, when in reality most
of them would be incapable of using yesterdays technology next week"

> I think MS knows this too. And I believe they use this to their
> advantage. So we end up with either the MS way and/or the other way. And
> since most people it seems don't use all or even most of the features of
> an application, the MS way is easier for most.

It always makes me smile when Steve Ballmer attempts to downplay open
office with the accusation that it only has the feature set of Office
XP. Quietly sidestepping the issue that for a vast swathe of their user
base that was more than adequate!

>>> One really annoying thing about OE was quoting. Although there is
>>> OE-QuoteFix which has taken care of that one. And I won't personally use
>>> OE without it.
>>>
>>> http://home.in.tum.de/~jain/software/oe-quotefix/
>>
>> Yup agreed, that makes a huge improvement. Not sure if it fixes the
>> phantom attachment problem though?
>
> Phantom attachment? Is that the same as that syntax error in the MIME
> attachment that had hidden it in OE? And when the user opened the email
> (or newsgroup post I suppose) OE didn't see or show it but it would
> automatically run it in the background?

No, I was thinking of its incomplete decoding of mime headers that would
cause it to think that there was a broken attachment on a post when a
line began:

begin something...

it took the "begin" as a mime header.

> Well AFAIK this was fixed long ago. Even then AFAIK the following would
> foil this. One was to view messages in plain text. And secondly (now the
> default) was to treat attachments in the restricted zone instead of the
> Internet zone. And the restricted zone would warn you before OE does
> anything stupid.
>
> The other problem that I recall about OE was as attachment could claim
> it was something normally harmless like a txt file or something in the
> MIME header. And when you open it up, it could be totally different and
> could be really an exe file for example and Windows would execute it.

That was actually a powerfully dumb default that it inherited from
windows (and I can't believe they have still not fixed it!), where a
double file extension such as picture.jpg.exe would be truncated for
display to "picture", and given the default .jpg handler's icon. However
when opened it would be treated as the .exe it really was.

> I believe this has been fixed too. But the work around is and is
> probably still a very good idea anyway is to save the attachment. And
> the name better end up as a txt type for example. If it isn't, something
> is wrong.

The whole reliance on file extensions for identifying file content and
associated apps is very 1970's anyway!

--
Cheers,

John.

/=================================================================\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\=================================================================/

 

[dennis@home]

Re: changed subject for experiement on threading orders

"John Rumm" <see.my.signature@nowhere.null> wrote in message
news:F9ydnY1aNsU_aWPWnZ2dnUVZ8iidnZ2d@brightview.co.uk...
> On 27/05/2010 23:17, BillW50 wrote:
>
>>>>> Each to his own I guess.
>>>>
>>>> OE seems so very efficient compared to other programs. As other
>>>> programs
>>>> seem to make the user go through so much work and it really shouldn't
>>>> be
>>>> that way.
>>>
>>> Oddly I find OE hugely frustrating - it must be it just does not work
>>> the way I think! Probably tells you something about either it or me
>>
>> I can see and understand this. As There is the MS way of doing things
>> and then there is the everybody else way of doing things. They are two
>> completely different systems of doing things. And doing it the MS way
>> does take a bit of a learning curve. And it is much harder the more you
>> know of the other ways. In the long run though, I find it far more
>> productive.
>
> I suspect its down to the way MS focus group test stuff and observe how
> users use things. As a result they often come at problems a different way
> or leave out subtle bits of functionality that some find confusing. It can
> make things easier to learn for novice users, but frequently also
> frustrates power users. The office "ribbon" being a good example. Users
> with no exposure to office style apps often find it easier to learn, but
> anyone used to another way of doing it (including previous users of MS
> office) find it difficult.
>
> (kind of like the opposite of Adobe with say photoshop - they will often
> go about a common feature in a way that seems more complicated than the
> others, but also in a way that opens up a whole new layer of extra power
> and flexibility for those who invest the time and effort really getting to
> understand what they are doing).
>
>> One really annoying thing about OE was quoting. Although there is
>> OE-QuoteFix which has taken care of that one. And I won't personally use
>> OE without it.
>>
>> http://home.in.tum.de/~jain/software/oe-quotefix/
>
> Yup agreed, that makes a huge improvement. Not sure if it fixes the
> phantom attachment problem though?

I don't know why people use OE at all.
It hasn't been maintained for years and was replaced by windows live mail.
WLM has the same looks but has most of the OE bugs fixed.
It is a lot easier and nicer to use than TB and agent and others I have
tried and forgotten about as they were so poor.

 

[BillW50]

Re: changed subject for experiement on threading orders

On 5/28/2010 1:58 AM, dennis@home wrote:
> "John Rumm" <see.my.signature@nowhere.null> wrote in message
> news:F9ydnY1aNsU_aWPWnZ2dnUVZ8iidnZ2d@brightview.co.uk...
>> On 27/05/2010 23:17, BillW50 wrote:
>>> One really annoying thing about OE was quoting. Although there is
>>> OE-QuoteFix which has taken care of that one. And I won't personally use
>>> OE without it.
>>>
>>> http://home.in.tum.de/~jain/software/oe-quotefix/
>>
>> Yup agreed, that makes a huge improvement. Not sure if it fixes the
>> phantom attachment problem though?
>
> I don't know why people use OE at all.

I do.

> It hasn't been maintained for years and was replaced by windows live mail.

WLM hasn't been updated in years either. As it seems like the updates
between OE6 and WLM stopped just months apart from one another.

> WLM has the same looks but has most of the OE bugs fixed.

Actually it has a new interface which is somewhat nice. Although they
separated email from newsgroups. Now instead of glancing at one window
if anything new came in, You have to toggle between email and
newsgroups. Which is more work.

WLM also broke the account view. And you no longer can select more than
one newsgroup (or folders in the case of email) and change all the sync
settings all at one time. Now it is a real pain in the neck to do.

And the worst thing IMHO about OE and WLM is the poor quoting. At least
there is OE-QuoteFix that takes care of OE. But there is yet a WLM-QuoteFix.

The only real good thing I like about WLM is you can't run OE6 on Vista
or Windows 7 machines. But WLM can.

> It is a lot easier and nicer to use than TB and agent and others I have
> tried and forgotten about as they were so poor.

I agree there. I don't know why others make things so hard to do some of
the most basic tasks. That just doesn't make any sense to me.

--
Bill
Thunderbird Portable 3.0 (20091130)

 

[dennis@home]

Re: changed subject for experiement on threading orders

"BillW50" <BillW50@aol.kom> wrote in message
news:hto8hj$oq5$1@news.eternal-september.org...
> On 5/28/2010 1:58 AM, dennis@home wrote:

8<

>> I don't know why people use OE at all.
>
> I do.
>
>> It hasn't been maintained for years and was replaced by windows live
>> mail.
>
> WLM hasn't been updated in years either. As it seems like the updates
> between OE6 and WLM stopped just months apart from one another.

My WLM was updated late last year.

>
>> WLM has the same looks but has most of the OE bugs fixed.
>
> Actually it has a new interface which is somewhat nice. Although they
> separated email from newsgroups. Now instead of glancing at one window if
> anything new came in, You have to toggle between email and newsgroups.
> Which is more work.

Not here.
I have email and two news servers that all appear in the same pane on the
left.

>
> WLM also broke the account view. And you no longer can select more than
> one newsgroup (or folders in the case of email) and change all the sync
> settings all at one time. Now it is a real pain in the neck to do.

I didn't know you could do that in OE.

>
> And the worst thing IMHO about OE and WLM is the poor quoting. At least
> there is OE-QuoteFix that takes care of OE. But there is yet a
> WLM-QuoteFix.

I don't usually have a problem with quoting, well nothing that OEQuoteFix
fixed.

>
> The only real good thing I like about WLM is you can't run OE6 on Vista or
> Windows 7 machines. But WLM can.
>
>> It is a lot easier and nicer to use than TB and agent and others I have
>> tried and forgotten about as they were so poor.
>
> I agree there. I don't know why others make things so hard to do some of
> the most basic tasks. That just doesn't make any sense to me.

They are written by programmers for themselves and other programmers.
They don't think about users much.

 

[Man at B&Q]

Re: changed subject for experiement on threading orders

On May 28, 12:49 am, BillW50 <Bill...@aol.kom> wrote:
> On 5/27/2010 59 PM, John Rumm wrote:
>
>
>
> > On 27/05/2010 23:17, BillW50 wrote:
>
> >>>>> Each to his own I guess.
>
> >>>> OE seems so very efficient compared to other programs. As other
> >>>> programs
> >>>> seem to make the user go through so much work and it really
> >>>> shouldn't be
> >>>> that way.
>
> >>> Oddly I find OE hugely frustrating - it must be it just does not work
> >>> the way I think! Probably tells you something about either it or me
>
> >> I can see and understand this. As There is the MS way of doing things
> >> and then there is the everybody else way of doing things. They are two
> >> completely different systems of doing things. And doing it the MS way
> >> does take a bit of a learning curve. And it is much harder the more you
> >> know of the other ways. In the long run though, I find it far more
> >> productive.
>
> > I suspect its down to the way MS focus group test stuff and observe how
> > users use things. As a result they often come at problems a different
> > way or leave out subtle bits of functionality that some find confusing.
> > It can make things easier to learn for novice users, but frequently also
> > frustrates power users. The office "ribbon" being a good example. Users
> > with no exposure to office style apps often find it easier to learn, but
> > anyone used to another way of doing it (including previous users of MS
> > office) find it difficult.
>
> > (kind of like the opposite of Adobe with say photoshop - they will often
> > go about a common feature in a way that seems more complicated than the
> > others, but also in a way that opens up a whole new layer of extra power
> > and flexibility for those who invest the time and effort really getting
> > to understand what they are doing).
>
> There is a lot of truth to what you say. And the MS way can cause
> problems to the power users. But then again, there is usually
> undocumented solutions to those problems. So that is really a tough call
> I agree.
>
> But get this, I remember there was a survey about office suites. And I
> don't remember the exact number, but it was like only 20% of the
> features was known among business users. I would have guessed 80%, but
> no. So I guess the masses don't really use most of the features of a
> given application anyway.
>
> I think MS knows this too.

And they've started dropping some of the 80%. Office 2007 no longer
supports routing slips which were central to passing certain documents
around our office.

MBQ

 

[BillW50]

Re: changed subject for experiement on threading orders

On 5/27/2010 7:28 PM, John Rumm wrote:
> On 28/05/2010 00:49, BillW50 wrote:
>> On 5/27/2010 59 PM, John Rumm wrote:
>>> On 27/05/2010 23:17, BillW50 wrote:
>>>
>>>>>>> Each to his own I guess.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> OE seems so very efficient compared to other programs. As other
>>>>>> programs
>>>>>> seem to make the user go through so much work and it really
>>>>>> shouldn't be
>>>>>> that way.
>>>>>
>>>>> Oddly I find OE hugely frustrating - it must be it just does not work
>>>>> the way I think! Probably tells you something about either it or me
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> I can see and understand this. As There is the MS way of doing things
>>>> and then there is the everybody else way of doing things. They are two
>>>> completely different systems of doing things. And doing it the MS way
>>>> does take a bit of a learning curve. And it is much harder the more you
>>>> know of the other ways. In the long run though, I find it far more
>>>> productive.
>>>
>>> I suspect its down to the way MS focus group test stuff and observe how
>>> users use things. As a result they often come at problems a different
>>> way or leave out subtle bits of functionality that some find confusing.
>>> It can make things easier to learn for novice users, but frequently also
>>> frustrates power users. The office "ribbon" being a good example. Users
>>> with no exposure to office style apps often find it easier to learn, but
>>> anyone used to another way of doing it (including previous users of MS
>>> office) find it difficult.
>>>
>>> (kind of like the opposite of Adobe with say photoshop - they will often
>>> go about a common feature in a way that seems more complicated than the
>>> others, but also in a way that opens up a whole new layer of extra power
>>> and flexibility for those who invest the time and effort really getting
>>> to understand what they are doing).
>>
>> There is a lot of truth to what you say. And the MS way can cause
>> problems to the power users. But then again, there is usually
>> undocumented solutions to those problems. So that is really a tough call
>> I agree.
>>
>> But get this, I remember there was a survey about office suites. And I
>> don't remember the exact number, but it was like only 20% of the
>> features was known among business users. I would have guessed 80%, but
>> no. So I guess the masses don't really use most of the features of a
>> given application anyway.
>
> Indeed! Computer/Technology journalist the late Guy Kewney had a saying
> of computer software some years back along the lines of "People are in
> the habit of demanding tomorrows technology today, when in reality most
> of them would be incapable of using yesterdays technology next week"

That is a great quote! lol

>> I think MS knows this too. And I believe they use this to their
>> advantage. So we end up with either the MS way and/or the other way. And
>> since most people it seems don't use all or even most of the features of
>> an application, the MS way is easier for most.
>
> It always makes me smile when Steve Ballmer attempts to downplay open
> office with the accusation that it only has the feature set of Office
> XP. Quietly sidestepping the issue that for a vast swathe of their user
> base that was more than adequate!

Which is also funny, since I like MS Office 2000 the best out of all of
the Office versions. I probably would like MS Office 98 a lot too, but
it crashed and burned a lot. Instead of fixing it, MS had you to get MS
Office 2000 instead which is stable IMHO.

I have two beefs with Open Office though. MS Word 2000 for example has
four views:

Normal
Web Layout
Print Layout
Outline

Open Office only has Web and Print views (OO calls them different of
course). But I use the normal view the most and OO doesn't have it.

The other beef I have about OO is the lack of change case. Upper and
lower case is there, but sentence and title case is not. Later I learned
that OO does have sentence case, but they buried it somewhere else. But
title case which I use all of the time, OO doesn't have that at all.

>>>> One really annoying thing about OE was quoting. Although there is
>>>> OE-QuoteFix which has taken care of that one. And I won't personally
>>>> use
>>>> OE without it.
>>>>
>>>> http://home.in.tum.de/~jain/software/oe-quotefix/
>>>
>>> Yup agreed, that makes a huge improvement. Not sure if it fixes the
>>> phantom attachment problem though?
>>
>> Phantom attachment? Is that the same as that syntax error in the MIME
>> attachment that had hidden it in OE? And when the user opened the email
>> (or newsgroup post I suppose) OE didn't see or show it but it would
>> automatically run it in the background?
>
> No, I was thinking of its incomplete decoding of mime headers that would
> cause it to think that there was a broken attachment on a post when a
> line began:
>
> begin something...
>
> it took the "begin" as a mime header.

Oh okay. Well TB pops up a box every time I type attachment. As it
thinks I want to add one into this post. So what other keywords can you
type to cause other boxes to pop up?

>> Well AFAIK this was fixed long ago. Even then AFAIK the following would
>> foil this. One was to view messages in plain text. And secondly (now the
>> default) was to treat attachments in the restricted zone instead of the
>> Internet zone. And the restricted zone would warn you before OE does
>> anything stupid.
>>
>> The other problem that I recall about OE was as attachment could claim
>> it was something normally harmless like a txt file or something in the
>> MIME header. And when you open it up, it could be totally different and
>> could be really an exe file for example and Windows would execute it.
>
> That was actually a powerfully dumb default that it inherited from
> windows (and I can't believe they have still not fixed it!), where a
> double file extension such as picture.jpg.exe would be truncated for
> display to "picture", and given the default .jpg handler's icon. However
> when opened it would be treated as the .exe it really was.

Well I don't know why Microsoft doesn't fix some stuff? Well I kind of
do. As I had a beef with them say around '84 about some bug in their
MS-DOS that would show up if you were a software developer.

Well it turns out that MS knew about it and they were not going to fix
it. And the reason was that other software developers already found what
I found. And they coded their programs around the bug. And MS claimed if
they fixed the bug, it would break thousands and thousands of programs
already written.

Well I can see their point. But at least some stuff really does need to
be really fixed right. I dunno, maybe the CIA and FBI uses this as a
backdoor to break into dumb criminals computers.

I always save attachments anyway. And open them up with a hex editor to
see what it really is anyway. Thus the whole problem is avoided.

>> I believe this has been fixed too. But the work around is and is
>> probably still a very good idea anyway is to save the attachment. And
>> the name better end up as a txt type for example. If it isn't, something
>> is wrong.
>
> The whole reliance on file extensions for identifying file content and
> associated apps is very 1970's anyway!

Well I started with computers in the 70's and I still kind of like it.
So what do you think works better? Having a header included with all
files that tells what kind of file it is? Works except when you want to
view a directory of files and the mass storage device has to look up
every single file in the list to find out what type of file it is.

CBM-DOS used a different method. Somewhat like the extension idea, but
rather stored the type just after the file name in the directory. And if
the file type ever ended up being wrong, it was not as easy as changing
the file extension.

Another thing about file extensions that I like is that they are easy to
change. For example, some drivers, games, programs, etc. install autorun
stuff that you may not need or want. At least running all of the time.

And for these, I add my own second extension. Say like Manager.exe to
Manager.exe.disabled. Now it is dead in the water and can't start and it
is out of the way.

For DOS machines I did the same, except it was also used as a RecycleBin
too. Instead of deleting files that I wasn't sure I would need again. I
would change the extension to .DEL. Say a file called data.txt I renamed
to data_txt.del. And when space started to run low, I would delete all
or some DEL file types.

--
Bill
Thunderbird Portable 3.0 (20091130)

 

[John Rumm]

Re: changed subject for experiement on threading orders

On 28/05/2010 14:03, BillW50 wrote:

>> No, I was thinking of its incomplete decoding of mime headers that would
>> cause it to think that there was a broken attachment on a post when a
>> line began:
>>
>> begin something...
>>
>> it took the "begin" as a mime header.
>
> Oh okay. Well TB pops up a box every time I type attachment. As it
> thinks I want to add one into this post. So what other keywords can you
> type to cause other boxes to pop up?

Don't know what the canonical list is, but "enclosed" triggers it as
well. The attachment thing was new in TB3 IIRC - presumably in response
to the number of times you end up getting a second email entitled "This
time with attachment!".

>> That was actually a powerfully dumb default that it inherited from
>> windows (and I can't believe they have still not fixed it!), where a
>> double file extension such as picture.jpg.exe would be truncated for
>> display to "picture", and given the default .jpg handler's icon. However
>> when opened it would be treated as the .exe it really was.
>
> Well I don't know why Microsoft doesn't fix some stuff? Well I kind of
> do. As I had a beef with them say around '84 about some bug in their
> MS-DOS that would show up if you were a software developer.
>
> Well it turns out that MS knew about it and they were not going to fix
> it. And the reason was that other software developers already found what
> I found. And they coded their programs around the bug. And MS claimed if
> they fixed the bug, it would break thousands and thousands of programs
> already written.

Yup, I still have a copy of "undocumented DOS" sat on the shelf - full
of all the little hacks that they would not dare change because all
their software used them, but at the same time they would not make an
official part of the API.

> Well I can see their point. But at least some stuff really does need to
> be really fixed right. I dunno, maybe the CIA and FBI uses this as a
> backdoor to break into dumb criminals computers.

Perhaps - I suspect they have better ways for the not so dumb criminals
though!

> I always save attachments anyway. And open them up with a hex editor to
> see what it really is anyway. Thus the whole problem is avoided.

>>> I believe this has been fixed too. But the work around is and is
>>> probably still a very good idea anyway is to save the attachment. And
>>> the name better end up as a txt type for example. If it isn't, something
>>> is wrong.
>>
>> The whole reliance on file extensions for identifying file content and
>> associated apps is very 1970's anyway!
>
> Well I started with computers in the 70's and I still kind of like it.
> So what do you think works better? Having a header included with all
> files that tells what kind of file it is? Works except when you want to
> view a directory of files and the mass storage device has to look up
> every single file in the list to find out what type of file it is.

The two options that seemed to work reasonably were the system used on
the Amiga where for files intended to be launched by clicking etc there
was an additional .info file. This contained the icon, a link to the
application needed to open it, and toolypes (parameters or environment
variables effectively), plus a few other capabilities. The downside was
an extra file to shift about but it gave good flexibility, freedom from
things fighting over extension associations etc. You could also then
look at a folder at several levels - say choosing to not see all the
minor files without info files.

The Mac approach was/is similar - but the extra information is encoded
within a separate fork of the file (multiple forks being a concept
supported but under used on NTFS as well interestingly)

IIRC BEos also had quite a sophisticated system, but that relied on the
clever relational file system it was based on (like the one MS were
building for Vistam or not as it turned out!)

> CBM-DOS used a different method. Somewhat like the extension idea, but
> rather stored the type just after the file name in the directory. And if
> the file type ever ended up being wrong, it was not as easy as changing
> the file extension.

If you go back to their intelligent GCR encoded floppies etc then there
were only really 4 files types (prg, seq, usr, rel) - and that was more
a statement of architecture than an indication of the app that would
handle them.

> Another thing about file extensions that I like is that they are easy to
> change. For example, some drivers, games, programs, etc. install autorun
> stuff that you may not need or want. At least running all of the time.
>
> And for these, I add my own second extension. Say like Manager.exe to
> Manager.exe.disabled. Now it is dead in the water and can't start and it
> is out of the way.

Disabling autorun altogether works for me!

> For DOS machines I did the same, except it was also used as a RecycleBin
> too. Instead of deleting files that I wasn't sure I would need again. I
> would change the extension to .DEL. Say a file called data.txt I renamed
> to data_txt.del. And when space started to run low, I would delete all
> or some DEL file types.

VMS used to be quite nice to work with in that respect. Files had names,
and versions. So every time you overwrote a file it was actually
recorded as a new version. So main.c;1 would get edited, and you would
then have main.c;2 etc. You can then go back to any previous version at
any time by deleting the most recent or fully specifying the version in
the file name etc. When you were happy to wipe the older versions you
just did a "purge" command to erase all but the last (or specified
number of) generations.


--
Cheers,

John.

/=================================================================\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\=================================================================/

 

[BillW50]

Re: changed subject for experiement on threading orders

On 5/28/2010 7:01 AM, dennis@home wrote:
>
>
> "BillW50" <BillW50@aol.kom> wrote in message
> news:hto8hj$oq5$1@news.eternal-september.org...
>> On 5/28/2010 1:58 AM, dennis@home wrote:
>
> 8<
>
>>> I don't know why people use OE at all.
>>
>> I do.
>>
>>> It hasn't been maintained for years and was replaced by windows live
>>> mail.
>>
>> WLM hasn't been updated in years either. As it seems like the updates
>> between OE6 and WLM stopped just months apart from one another.
>
> My WLM was updated late last year.

Well I say this from what I have been reading in the Microsoft
newsgroups since over a year ago. That Microsoft got out of the email
and newsgroup business and they don't support either one anymore. They
still offer WLM though if you want to download it.

>>> WLM has the same looks but has most of the OE bugs fixed.
>>
>> Actually it has a new interface which is somewhat nice. Although they
>> separated email from newsgroups. Now instead of glancing at one window
>> if anything new came in, You have to toggle between email and
>> newsgroups. Which is more work.
>
> Not here.
> I have email and two news servers that all appear in the same pane on
> the left.

Really? I must have done something wrong. Can you get the RSS in the
same window too?

>> WLM also broke the account view. And you no longer can select more
>> than one newsgroup (or folders in the case of email) and change all
>> the sync settings all at one time. Now it is a real pain in the neck
>> to do.
>
> I didn't know you could do that in OE.

Oh yeah! That one really spoils you a lot. Take that one away and it
really hurts.

>> And the worst thing IMHO about OE and WLM is the poor quoting. At
>> least there is OE-QuoteFix that takes care of OE. But there is yet a
>> WLM-QuoteFix.
>
> I don't usually have a problem with quoting, well nothing that
> OEQuoteFix fixed.

OE-QuoteFix does a lot of nifty things. But one that I really like which
it seems is undocumented. As say there is a quote that is just so badly
messed up that OE-QuoteFix couldn't even fix. Well you can manually or
copy and paste into a word processor or something. Strip all quotes
after the first line. And strip off all return characters until the end
of the paragraph. And it is okay, OE-QuoteFix will rebuild everything
and make it right again when you send it out.

No other newsgroup reader works as nice as OE-QuoteFix does. I am so
surprised they just don't bother.

>> The only real good thing I like about WLM is you can't run OE6 on
>> Vista or Windows 7 machines. But WLM can.
>>
>>> It is a lot easier and nicer to use than TB and agent and others I have
>>> tried and forgotten about as they were so poor.
>>
>> I agree there. I don't know why others make things so hard to do some
>> of the most basic tasks. That just doesn't make any sense to me.
>
> They are written by programmers for themselves and other programmers.
> They don't think about users much.

Yes! Very good point! Gary Kildall was asked why doesn't he make CP/M
easier to use? He replied back saying any half wit could learn CP/M. And
he was right of course. But even half wits rather use MS-DOS because it
was so much easier.

--
Bill
Thunderbird Portable 3.0 (20091130)

 

[dennis@home]

Re: changed subject for experiement on threading orders

"BillW50" <BillW50@aol.kom> wrote in message
news:htpg34$91k$1@news.eternal-september.org...
> On 5/28/2010 7:01 AM, dennis@home wrote:
>>
>>
>> "BillW50" <BillW50@aol.kom> wrote in message
>> news:hto8hj$oq5$1@news.eternal-september.org...
>>> On 5/28/2010 1:58 AM, dennis@home wrote:
>>
>> 8<
>>
>>>> I don't know why people use OE at all.
>>>
>>> I do.
>>>
>>>> It hasn't been maintained for years and was replaced by windows live
>>>> mail.
>>>
>>> WLM hasn't been updated in years either. As it seems like the updates
>>> between OE6 and WLM stopped just months apart from one another.
>>
>> My WLM was updated late last year.
>
> Well I say this from what I have been reading in the Microsoft newsgroups
> since over a year ago. That Microsoft got out of the email and newsgroup
> business and they don't support either one anymore. They still offer WLM
> though if you want to download it.
>
>>>> WLM has the same looks but has most of the OE bugs fixed.
>>>
>>> Actually it has a new interface which is somewhat nice. Although they
>>> separated email from newsgroups. Now instead of glancing at one window
>>> if anything new came in, You have to toggle between email and
>>> newsgroups. Which is more work.
>>
>> Not here.
>> I have email and two news servers that all appear in the same pane on
>> the left.
>
> Really? I must have done something wrong. Can you get the RSS in the same
> window too?

I don't know as I don't use it for RSS.
I would imagine you can add them to the quick views pane if nothing else.

 

[BillW50]

Re: changed subject for experiement on threading orders

On 5/28/2010 12:43 PM, John Rumm wrote:
> On 28/05/2010 14:03, BillW50 wrote:
>
>>> No, I was thinking of its incomplete decoding of mime headers that would
>>> cause it to think that there was a broken attachment on a post when a
>>> line began:
>>>
>>> begin something...
>>>
>>> it took the "begin" as a mime header.
>>
>> Oh okay. Well TB pops up a box every time I type attachment. As it
>> thinks I want to add one into this post. So what other keywords can you
>> type to cause other boxes to pop up?
>
> Don't know what the canonical list is, but "enclosed" triggers it as
> well. The attachment thing was new in TB3 IIRC - presumably in response
> to the number of times you end up getting a second email entitled "This
> time with attachment!".

Well okay, it seems something pretty strange to do. But I could get used
to it I guess.

>>> That was actually a powerfully dumb default that it inherited from
>>> windows (and I can't believe they have still not fixed it!), where a
>>> double file extension such as picture.jpg.exe would be truncated for
>>> display to "picture", and given the default .jpg handler's icon. However
>>> when opened it would be treated as the .exe it really was.
>>
>> Well I don't know why Microsoft doesn't fix some stuff? Well I kind of
>> do. As I had a beef with them say around '84 about some bug in their
>> MS-DOS that would show up if you were a software developer.
>>
>> Well it turns out that MS knew about it and they were not going to fix
>> it. And the reason was that other software developers already found what
>> I found. And they coded their programs around the bug. And MS claimed if
>> they fixed the bug, it would break thousands and thousands of programs
>> already written.
>
> Yup, I still have a copy of "undocumented DOS" sat on the shelf - full
> of all the little hacks that they would not dare change because all
> their software used them, but at the same time they would not make an
> official part of the API.

Yes well what can I say.

>> Well I can see their point. But at least some stuff really does need to
>> be really fixed right. I dunno, maybe the CIA and FBI uses this as a
>> backdoor to break into dumb criminals computers.
>
> Perhaps - I suspect they have better ways for the not so dumb criminals
> though!

Perhaps! I always have this feeling that Microsoft knows a lot of things
that they can use to get inside of your computer. And I also have a
feeling that Microsoft used this and disclosed some of them to the
Justice Department to get them to back off. I dunno! Just a gut feeling.

>> I always save attachments anyway. And open them up with a hex editor to
>> see what it really is anyway. Thus the whole problem is avoided.
>
>>>> I believe this has been fixed too. But the work around is and is
>>>> probably still a very good idea anyway is to save the attachment. And
>>>> the name better end up as a txt type for example. If it isn't,
>>>> something
>>>> is wrong.
>>>
>>> The whole reliance on file extensions for identifying file content and
>>> associated apps is very 1970's anyway!
>>
>> Well I started with computers in the 70's and I still kind of like it.
>> So what do you think works better? Having a header included with all
>> files that tells what kind of file it is? Works except when you want to
>> view a directory of files and the mass storage device has to look up
>> every single file in the list to find out what type of file it is.
>
> The two options that seemed to work reasonably were the system used on
> the Amiga where for files intended to be launched by clicking etc there
> was an additional .info file. This contained the icon, a link to the
> application needed to open it, and toolypes (parameters or environment
> variables effectively), plus a few other capabilities. The downside was
> an extra file to shift about but it gave good flexibility, freedom from
> things fighting over extension associations etc. You could also then
> look at a folder at several levels - say choosing to not see all the
> minor files without info files.
>
> The Mac approach was/is similar - but the extra information is encoded
> within a separate fork of the file (multiple forks being a concept
> supported but under used on NTFS as well interestingly)
>
> IIRC BEos also had quite a sophisticated system, but that relied on the
> clever relational file system it was based on (like the one MS were
> building for Vistam or not as it turned out!)

And GEOS had used headers in front of the files, programs.

>> CBM-DOS used a different method. Somewhat like the extension idea, but
>> rather stored the type just after the file name in the directory. And if
>> the file type ever ended up being wrong, it was not as easy as changing
>> the file extension.
>
> If you go back to their intelligent GCR encoded floppies etc then there
> were only really 4 files types (prg, seq, usr, rel) - and that was more
> a statement of architecture than an indication of the app that would
> handle them.

Actually there was 5 in CBM-DOS v10. DOS was in each floppy drive (in
ROM) and not in the computer itself. So depending on the floppy drives,
you could have many CBM-DOS running at the same time.

I am going by failing memory, but I believe the popular ones were CBM
v2.6 (single sided 5 1/4 drive), CBM-DOS v3.x (double sided 5 1/4
drives) and CBM-DOS v10 (3 1/2 drives).

That 5th one on v10 was really odd. I believe it was called CBM type. I
think Commodore called it a partition, but it acted like both a
partition and a subdirectory. As it was listed in the directory as a
folder. And you could open it like a folder. But creating it you had to
state the size of it. Not by sector, but by whole tracks I believe.

>> Another thing about file extensions that I like is that they are easy to
>> change. For example, some drivers, games, programs, etc. install autorun
>> stuff that you may not need or want. At least running all of the time.
>>
>> And for these, I add my own second extension. Say like Manager.exe to
>> Manager.exe.disabled. Now it is dead in the water and can't start and it
>> is out of the way.
>
> Disabling autorun altogether works for me!

Yes you can go that route too if you would like.

>> For DOS machines I did the same, except it was also used as a RecycleBin
>> too. Instead of deleting files that I wasn't sure I would need again. I
>> would change the extension to .DEL. Say a file called data.txt I renamed
>> to data_txt.del. And when space started to run low, I would delete all
>> or some DEL file types.
>
> VMS used to be quite nice to work with in that respect. Files had names,
> and versions. So every time you overwrote a file it was actually
> recorded as a new version. So main.c;1 would get edited, and you would
> then have main.c;2 etc. You can then go back to any previous version at
> any time by deleting the most recent or fully specifying the version in
> the file name etc. When you were happy to wipe the older versions you
> just did a "purge" command to erase all but the last (or specified
> number of) generations.

Yes all very nice.

--
Bill
Thunderbird Portable 3.0 (20091130)

 

[BillW50]

Re: changed subject for experiement on threading orders

On 5/28/2010 6:09 PM, dennis@home wrote:
>
>
> "BillW50" <BillW50@aol.kom> wrote in message
> news:htpg34$91k$1@news.eternal-september.org...
>> On 5/28/2010 7:01 AM, dennis@home wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> "BillW50" <BillW50@aol.kom> wrote in message
>>> news:hto8hj$oq5$1@news.eternal-september.org...
>>>> On 5/28/2010 1:58 AM, dennis@home wrote:
>>>
>>> 8<
>>>
>>>>> I don't know why people use OE at all.
>>>>
>>>> I do.
>>>>
>>>>> It hasn't been maintained for years and was replaced by windows live
>>>>> mail.
>>>>
>>>> WLM hasn't been updated in years either. As it seems like the updates
>>>> between OE6 and WLM stopped just months apart from one another.
>>>
>>> My WLM was updated late last year.
>>
>> Well I say this from what I have been reading in the Microsoft
>> newsgroups since over a year ago. That Microsoft got out of the email
>> and newsgroup business and they don't support either one anymore. They
>> still offer WLM though if you want to download it.
>>
>>>>> WLM has the same looks but has most of the OE bugs fixed.
>>>>
>>>> Actually it has a new interface which is somewhat nice. Although they
>>>> separated email from newsgroups. Now instead of glancing at one window
>>>> if anything new came in, You have to toggle between email and
>>>> newsgroups. Which is more work.
>>>
>>> Not here.
>>> I have email and two news servers that all appear in the same pane on
>>> the left.
>>
>> Really? I must have done something wrong. Can you get the RSS in the
>> same window too?
>
> I don't know as I don't use it for RSS.
> I would imagine you can add them to the quick views pane if nothing else.

Well I didn't know. Something else to check out.

--
Bill
Thunderbird Portable 3.0 (20091130)

 

[Tony Bryer]

Re: changed subject for experiement on threading orders

On Fri, 28 May 2010 08:03:54 -0500 BillW50 wrote :
> Well I don't know why Microsoft doesn't fix some stuff? Well I kind of
> do. As I had a beef with them say around '84 about some bug in their
> MS-DOS that would show up if you were a software developer.
>
> Well it turns out that MS knew about it and they were not going to fix
> it. And the reason was that other software developers already found
> what I found. And they coded their programs around the bug. And MS
> claimed if they fixed the bug, it would break thousands and thousands
> of programs already written.

Have you read Raymond Chen's 'The Old New Thing' - some of the stories he
recounts about things done at MS to keep badly behaved programs working
on newer versions of DOS/Windows are amazing.

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2006/12/07/1233002.aspx

--
Tony Bryer, Greentram: 'Software to build on' Melbourne, Australia
www.superbeam.co.uk www.eurobeam.co.uk www.greentram.com

 

[Tony Bryer]

Re: changed subject for experiement on threading orders

On Fri, 28 May 2010 08:03:54 -0500 BillW50 wrote :
> Which is also funny, since I like MS Office 2000 the best out of all of
> the Office versions. I probably would like MS Office 98 a lot too, but
> it crashed and burned a lot. Instead of fixing it, MS had you to get MS
> Office 2000 instead which is stable IMHO.

Having been a Lotus WordPro user since it first came out, I struggle with
Word every time I am forced to use it. But I think I may yet have to:
WordPro runs on Windows 7 but every time an warning dialog appears first.
If MS spent millions on usability studies for Word, I have failed to
notice their effect.

--
Tony Bryer, Greentram: 'Software to build on' Melbourne, Australia
www.superbeam.co.uk www.eurobeam.co.uk www.greentram.com