Subject: Re: Pine 4.0

From: Bruno Boettcher <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 19 Nov 1996 08:54:45 +0100 (MET)

On 14 Nov 1996, Vikas Agnihotri wrote:
>:  >  More specifically, support for threading and kill files... This is
>:  > **SORELY** needed. Right now, I am using 'slrn' for news-reading and
>:  > Pine for mail-reading and I hate doing it this way... :(
>
>Paul O Bartlett wrote:
>:      I use trn in a kind of batch mode to implement killfiles
>:  immediately before invoking Pine.  It's a little klunky, but it's
>:  better than the nothing of Pine, which I agree is grievously lacking 
>:  this regard.  
>
>Why this rather desperate desire to have both mail and news in one package?
>Why not just select and combine the best programs there are around - editor,
>
i do completely agree, i use pine for reading mails, vim to compose them
and trn to read news.... and am really happy with it... what do you don't
like with trn? it is trheaded and has killfile support and lots more...

>Wouldn't it be better if the pine team concentrated on making the mail
>program better and faster, and at least for the time being left the news
>business to specialists?
yes, leave the news support and please concentrate on full imap4 protocol :)
 
ciao
[email-masked] 

==============================================================
[email-masked]
http://www-ensps.u-strasbg.fr/~bboett/
===============================================================
the total amount of intelligence on earth is constant.
human population is growing....

---

From: Mark Crispin <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 20 Nov 1996 18:30:14 -0800

On Tue, 19 Nov 1996, Tony Calguire wrote:
> > To support IMAP4, we must support hierarchical names, subscriptions, and
> > UID management. That's most of what constitutes Pine's news support.  The
> > code that babbles NNTP is very small and shrinking -- it's just 2/3 the
> > size in Pine 4.0 (less than 32K now) that it was in Pine 3.95.
> So what does this mean for Pine's future news reading capabilities?  Does 
> this smaller amount of code mean that Pine is going to be a worse 
> newsreader than it is now (and it's not really that bad, BTW)?

It means that Pine's future news reading capabilities will be better and
faster.  What's more, you'll still be able to do the same things with news
as with mail, and vice versa. 

What I was referring to ("the code that babbles NNTP") was not a reduction
in capability for news reading, but rather that code that is specific to
news reading is getting smaller, so there is no real savings in removing
it.  What was news-specific is becoming general purpose and used
elsewhere, e.g. in IMAP4 support.

> My 
> Freenet is considering upgrading Pine, and I'm afraid that if Pine 
> doesn't do news anymore, they'll give up on providing Usenet news altogether.

Don't worry!

> I think you should keep news.  The trend in internet software is toward 
> all-in-one programs, anyway.

We feel the same way.

-- Mark --	Read http://www.imap.org for the "best kept secret in email"

DoD #0105, R90/6 pilot, FAX: (206) 685-4045  ICBM: N 47 39'35" W 122 18'39"
Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate.

---

From: Mark Crispin <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 19 Nov 1996 11:20:33 -0800

On 19 Nov 1996, Steve Howie wrote:
> Excellent point, Bruno. I'd assume that it would be relatively easy to
> "unbundle" the news functionality from Pine and leave the core program
> intact. While the intent of providing a Pine-like interface for news
> reading is admirable (and actually implemented quite nicely), news support
> is a bit of baggage we could do without. Howzabout making it an
> installable feature when Pine is built? 

Pine's news support is not a significant amount of code, and the code that
is specifically for news is shrinking.

> Like you, I'd prefer IMAP4 support over news enhancements.

This statement makes less sense than you think.

In terms of what would be added to support news, we want threading for
mail too.  In fact, because of IMAP4 support it's hard to think of much
that is news-specific at all, other than the NNTP code and recognition of
Newsgroups:, Followup-To:, and References: headers.