Re: Sending attachments

[Miles Bader <miles@gnu.org>]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:
>> As has been pointed out, message-mode has more features than mail-mode.
>
> Yes.  And Gnus has much more features than Rmail.  So what?  We all do
> agree that much more features means more complexity in setting things
> up.  Why impose that on people who are happy with simple modes?

How, exactly, is message-mode an "imposition" on "people who are happy
with simple modes"?

  * Its user-interface?  [As far as I can tell, message-mode's UI
    _isn't_ complex, and indeed is pretty much exactly the same as
    mail-mode's (its additional functionality being largely invisible
    unless you use it).  I've used both many times over the years, and
    never noticed anything obviously different (there are random trivial
    differences like header-filling whitespace, etc, but those are not
    significant -- if they actually bother people, they can easily be
    changed).]

  * Its resource consumption?  [It doesn't seem any slower (which makes
    sense, as the great bulk of the extra functionality is only used
    with explicitly invoked).  It's more code, but doesn't seem horribly
    large by emacs standards, and additional memory used by its code
    seems small compared to the rest of emacs, and shouldn't be an issue
    on any modern system.]

  * Is it more buggy?  [Never noticed any obvious difference in this respect.]

  * Is it missing useful user-customization hooks or settings that
    mail-mode has?

  * Does it interface badly with some other Emacs code (e.g., rmail)?

Please, please, somebody who asserts that mail-mode is necessary, give
some concrete examples as to _why_.  The amount of hand-waving in this
thread is maddening...

-Miles

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