Re: How to set up gnus email for novices with little mastery.

[Joel Reicher]

To all, apologies in advance for potentially baiting this probable
troll.

Don Saklad <dsaklad@gnu.org> writes:

> The argument looked arrogant because the whole idea of computer
> software technology is to simplify !

Completely wrong. The whole idea of software is to enable, i.e. make
tasks possible that weren't possible before.

Corollaries of this are to make the software faster, so longer tasks
become possible, and to make the software `simpler' so that the
audiences you have in mind are able to use the software, and so on.

The thing is, however, that these are only corollaries. It is
unreasonable to expect every software project under the sun to have
all of them as central goals, just like it is unreasonable to expect
the controls of a jumbo jet to be operable with minimal training. Jets
are designed to be fast, safe, efficient, and so on -- not to be
pilotable by your average Joe Schmo.

Gnus is progressively being made easier to use, as far as I can tell,
but it's inappropriate for that to be top priority. As other people
have pointed out to you, other software already meets that need. Gnus
meets other needs, and there is *not* much software that meets the
needs Gnus does, so the priorities will stay as they are, I'm sure.

Cheers,

        - Joel