Re: Sending attachments

[Alfred M. Szmidt]

     (1) We must still maintain message-mode as well, so mail-mode's
         "simplicity" yields no obvious code maintenance Benefit.

Seeing that we have already rcirc vs. erc, rmail vs. gnus vs. vm
vs. mh (which each has their own mail sending mode!), viper
vs. vi-mode vs. vile; a small _derived_ mode can't be the problem.
You already have people who prefer it, and are more than happy to fix
any bugs it has.  Maintaince is clear not the issue here.

         Indeed, it's obviously more of a _burden_ to maintain both
         modes than it is to maintain message-mode alone (in the case
         that we got rid of mail-mode).  This burden goes up, of
         course, if mail-mode starts getting more features, like the
         suggested attachments.

For such a feature to be properly implmented they wouldn't be in
mail-mode (or any such mode), but in a seperate mode that handles MIME
attachment exclusivly.  If message-mode handles this itself, then it
is a sign that it was not properly thought through.

  (3) Having both modes present presents a user burden, especially
      because the default is mail-mode -- there are many cases where a
      new user may need the extra features (even if he doesn't realize
      this, e.g., if he is sending non-ASCII characters in a way that
      isn't handled properly by mail-mode), but will still be using
      the default settings.

I use it every day for non-ASCII text, and mail-mode has not had any
problems with that.