Slashdot Mirror
Gmail vs Pine
Snarfed has an interesting review on Gmail vs Pine. From the article: "I've used Pine as my email client for, well, pretty much forever. I use it because it's fast, powerful, stable, and very keyboardable. (I hate the mouse.) However, since I work at Google, I'm constantly bombarded with people who ask me why I don't use Gmail. After hearing the nth person brag about how much it increased their productivity, I finally broke down and tried it. I didn't expect much, since I've never liked web-based email clients. However, I made myself use it as my only email client, for a month, to give it a fair shot."
It can be used anywhere, without needing to install anything. I like some IMAP clients, but this is why I chose Gmail over them.
Perhaps google pages would have been a better hosting choice for a story that appears on slashdot. I can't even load the page.
...GoogleFight!
GMail Email Client: 5,100,000 results
Pine Email Client: 2,080,000 results
Sorry dude. The unwashed masses have spoken. Time to upgrade!
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Here's why I use gmail (over PINE):
Also, this is a comparison of a completely integrated package (gmail) with a Mail User Agent (MUA). I think for my purposes I enjoy finally letting someone else manage all of the pieces for me. I still have my personal favorite MUA for transferring all of my gmail to local storage and archive (just in case something goes terribly wrong) but so far I think gmail is a great piece of work.
I like it :)
Apart from the obviously silly "An anonymous reader writes " at the start of it.
First time I've seen Journals posted, is it a slow news day, or just trying out another new feature?
liqbase
First I would like to say it is nice to see an employee of a company looking at positive 'and' negative aspects of a product their employeer makes.
0 25454'./'s I am experimenting with gmail, and, have been having about the same experience, mostly I am impressed, but I am left with a feeling that it just isn't mature enough yet as a mail client. Don't get me wrong of all the webmail clients I have used this is my favorite, but generally I miss Mutt.
Secondly I used to use pine, for several years in fact, until I got turned onto mutt by a friend, it is IMHO way more powerful, and, configurable than pine.
Thirdly after recommendations from http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=181673&cid=15
GeekServ Unix Consulting Services (http://www.geekserv.com)
pine + PortaPuTTY + a thumb drive
It can be used anywhere by just plugging your thumb drive in with the security of SSH. And you get the benefit of no targeted advertizing (And no company aggregating your life's communications...)
pine isn't even Free Software for pater's sake!
You cannot modify pine and distribute it; you have to make a patch of your changes, and distribute that along with a copy of the source code.
Mutt is superior (as is yahoo mail -except when it comes to pop3 access which is becoming less and less relevent every day)!
the article appears to be slashdotted already.
Your sig(k) has been stolen. There is a puff of smoke!
There's no need to just use either pine or the Gmail web interface. You could use pine for quick checks to see if there is new mail on your Gmail account (and for periodic backups), and then use the Gmail web interface to organize your mail or to check mail when you're on the road.
Why restrict yourself to just one or the other?
Transistors and Beer!!
I don't know how may e-mails I've sent that simply say:
Hey (or Mr. X or Ms. X...)
I have the habit of indenting paragraphs with the tab key, which in GMAIL places the cursor on SEND and after a bit of typing and the return key (especially when I'm not watching the screen)... There it goes with no body to the e-mail.
What is this? Some guy tries something that everyone has been using for years now? Hey - guess what I found out the other day - cars! I used to walk everywhere..... Hey! I found out about phones last week! They're great - I don't have to travel 50 miles to speak to ....
Get your own free personal location tracker
Why LaTex is better than OpenOffice. Does anyone else find this article kind of odd? While I can see my mom using gmail, I don't think I could convince her to use pine. Granted pine might be more powerful, and the additional features he listed are probably worth adding, but pine is sorta.... vt100-ish.
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
Back in the dark ages before webmail, only newbies and English majors used pine. Everyone else either used mail or elm. I personally used elm, and still prefer it if I ever need to use a command-line mail utility, which isn't all that often these days.
The things I hated about Pine were that it unnecessarily reversed colors on the screen to look more "graphical," and its default editor was that horror known as Pico. I much preferred elm and vi.
* It's somewhat faster than your average IMAP server. (Of course, this is both a success of Gmail and a failing of most IMAP servers.)
* Gmail is smart about hiding quoted text and emails i've seen. This rocks. Somehow it even knows the 1% of cases where I actually do want to see the quoted text. I have no idea how.
* The UI for threading, or >>conversations in Gmail lingo, rocks even harder. The killer feature is that the bodies of all messages in the thread on a single screen. Combined with hiding quoted text, this is very powerful.
* Mail is indexed. My average search takes under a second in Gmail, but around 10 seconds in Pine.
* >>Tags, aka labels or virtual folders, are all the rage these days. GMail's implementation of them is slick, and eminently usable. Pine's >>keywords offer most of the same functionality, but compared to Gmail, they're a little clunky.
* There are keyboard shortcuts! Wonder of wonders, it's a webapp that has keyboard shortcuts. Even more amazing, I can actually do most of my normal email tasks with the keyboard shortcuts only. If I couldn't, I never would have given Gmail a second glance.
* I love the Y key, a single keystroke for archiving email. Archiving in pine takes two keystrokes at best, and four if I last saved to a different folder than my "archive" folder.
* The address book is great, mostly because I never have to use it. Gmail automatically remembers everyone I've sent email to or received email from, and auto-completes when I start type their name or email address. I wish Pine did this!
The Bad
* Filtering has a great UI, but it's horribly weak. It has maybe a third of the headers and options that I normally filter on. You can't OR or NOT filter conditions. The set of filter actions is anemic, even with labels. Want me to go on?
* There's no way to bounce an email. This should be pretty trivial to add.
* If no email is selected, the Y key should archive the email under the cursor. This should be common sense.
* You can't automatically create a filter based on an email. Why not?
* You can search, but you can't select messages based on headers, subject, or body text. Worse, if you have more messages than fit on the screen, you can't select any messages that aren't on the screen. If you ever get flooded with email, or with spam that escapes the spam filters, god help you.
* Thank god there are keyboard shortcuts...but there aren't nearly enough! I don't mind using the mouse for one-time stuff, but if i have to use it often during my normal email routine, that's a deal breaker. Keyboard shortcuts for go to label, go to sent mail/drafts, and select all/none/unread would be necessary if I was ever to go back to Gmail.
The Ugly
* Marking messages as read is impossible with the keyboard, and takes three clicks with the mouse: Select ___, More Actions, Mark As Read. I could just leave them unread, but then the labels display is useless for showing which mailing lists have new mail.
* Selecting a message doesn't automatically move the cursor to the next message. This is just plain silly.
* The Y key is horribly inconsistent. If you're in the Inbox, it archives. If you're in a label, it removes the label. If you're in spam or trash, it moves to the Inbox! This is a bad case of modal input.
* Gmail might be smart about (not) displaying quoted text, but it can't handle composing with quoted text to save its life. There are a ton of problems with this, but among others, it needs a way to >>remove trailing quotes when sending.
Heh ... you're using Pine? Real nerds just telnet to port 110.
</sarcasm>
If you work for Microsoft and you use Pine to access your Hotmail account you've already meet SteveB for a nice one-on-one :-)
I use mutt and I run my own mail server on hardware I own. It's not that hard. I have given gmail a fair shot, and for a time, was using it to archive my mail. It's a great product but I will not use it.
WHY?
Because I don't trust the corporate motivation and the corporate mentality that lurks behind Google, or the people who implement their policies.
Google a company and its officers are legally obligated to increase shareholder value, not protect my privacy, or stand for what is right or fair. When the governement comes knocking with an illegal search, they will roll over. Those emails I sent to my friends bitching about some politician... may not be so private. Google's policies give them the right to change the rules in the future, and they have all my communication. Given the trajectory of world events - who knows where things will go.
The other problem is one of people. People can be weak, especially one who need money. When then market is really hot for some other person to buy or sell information, some person will be tempted to take my mail from the Google datacenter, burn a DVD and mail it off to Madison. I wouldn't even know.
Before you say that "I have nothing to hide" - consider printing every email and text message you write and posting them on your office/cubicle or (home) front door. Think about a world where there was a public repository of everyone's phone calls and anyone could go back and listen. Would you feel like you could really express yourself? Everybody has private stuff - lots of it. If you still disagree, mail me your ssn, name, and birthdate.
Communication is too important to blindly trust that someone else will be responsible and look out for your interests.
From an orange producer who says he prefers apples.
Cynicism is all very well, but make sure there is something to be cynical about first.
If this guy does indeed work for Google, perhaps he could take a crack at fixing the problems he sees in the gmail source. As I understand it, everyone in Google gets access to all of their source code and can hack away at stuff even if they're not directly involved in the project. It would be pretty awesome if he could fix some of the problems (several of which I agree with) and present them as fixes to the people in Google that run gmail.
J
I'd like to RTFA, but snarfed has been snarfed by Slashdot!
I haven't used Pine for a couple of years now, largely due to the advent of IMAP. My prefered mail client is Thunderbird, but it would be a hard choice between Pine and GMail. Now GMail has some obvious GUI advantages (point and click, drag and drop, images, etc.), but I find its threading to be erratic and searches to be less-than-spot-on. The main advantage of Pine is speed for short emails. This evaporates rapidly if you have to write anything substantial.
I'd argue that the author is probably making the wrong comparison. For most users, the choice is between Thunderbird / Outlook and GMail / Hotmail, especially if IMAP is an option.
Thunderbird is flexible about threading, but it lacks the indexed search of GMail. However, as most users are presumably familiar with text searches (a la grep or even the Window Find tool), Thunderbird search is perfect for my needs.
I enjoy the ability to use multiple accounts and the many useful extensions such as Engmail (for OpenPGP support), my own choice of dictionaries, and RSS support.
There are a few annoyances with Thunderbird, such as less-than-optimal support for multiple accounts, but workarounds are available. I've written about some of the problems and solutions on my blog.
Phoenix, Boston, Little Rock, see a pattern?
OK, can gmail do PGP?
If it does, is my key safe from subpoena from US government, however long it would take, including bought SCOTUS verdict, that Google has to hand it? I mean, when I use local MUA, my key never leaves my laptop. In case of gmail, unless Google implements RSA, AES etc in Javascript, my secret key would have to reside on Google servers...
Robert
PS No, I'm not long-haired, bearded, smelly privacy advocate; my company works with national telecom and data retention laws as well as our contract require us to use PGP whenever we pass personal information of their consumers. There are lots of sane (as in non-nerdy) and legitimate reasons to use crypto.
Bastard Operator From 193.219.28.162
Having switched from IMAP to only GMail about 8 months ago, my only gripe is the inability to 'Mark As Read' in filters - this is my #1 pet peeve with GMail and it seems like it would be *tirivial* to do - why haven't they done it?
Oh - another thing that would be nice would be to be able to set a maximum number of messages allowed in a Label and after that to erase the oldest ones. I know, I am asking to make labels more like folders, but when you are on as many mailing lists as I am, that you know are archived anyway, you just don't want to keep copies of all that crap around in your mailbox. It just makes my POP download of messages (for archival) that much more difficult.
VM.
Um, he's talking about the Gmail web-based client. It is, amazingly enough, an application used to read and send email. Another cheer for the moderators for modding you up (to insightful, even!).
I suggest we all start using "snarfed" as a synonym for "slashdotted". As in "we have figuratively stolen your server('s bandwith)" == "we have slashdotted your server" == "we have snarfed your server". I like this word better anyway. Thank you, OP, for your contribution to the /. subculture language !
PS: Don't worry about your server, it will be back up online soon when the story will leave the front page.
I have a gmail account. I think it is the best web-based email out there. I don't think it can yet replace desktop email & won't trust it to until I can more easily transfer all mail, addresses, and settings from and to any other email provider.
Sounds like a very diplomatic outcome on his part.
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
A warning about gmail: I like it, but it constantly finds itself blacklisted by a number of spam control services, such as http://www.mail-abuse.com/. As a result, I cannot use gmail to send to co-workers, because my company's IT dept. uses the above service. The gmail team either does not care that many organizations simply will not receive mail sent via gmail, or are unable to prevent gmail from being repeatedly blacklisted. Messages to the gmail support team about this issue appear to fall into a black hole. This is curious to me, since even hotmail was able to figure out how to keep from being constantly blacklisted.
I often find it strange when folks post articles online about the company they work for. Unless you're anonymous, an executive, or in the PR dept, is your company going to want you sending out reviews of their products?
(I don't know who this guy is, and the site is Slashdotted.)
-- dR.fuZZo
This isn't 1976, you're not sitting at a dumb terminal hooked up to a mainframe. It's '06, we have graphical user interfaces, in fact we're probably only a few years away from functional 3D GUI's, and you don't like mice.
WTF.
--The universe will not be altered by forum threads, even those which are very wry. --Tycho Brahe (Penny Arcade)
But for email, the "whaaa??" turns into "Are you insane??" Even before the government got caught spying on citizens without warrants, giving them (or anyone else) a one-stop-shopping point for all their intercepts, was an unnecessary risk. Now it's just stupid, and not for "paranoid cypherpunks" but even for any average Joe who has opened a newspaper in the last few years. WTF are you people thinking? Start encrypting, and make them break into your home if they want to read your email. Give them a chance to get caught.
We should be moving away from these old-fashioned centralized servers, taking power for ourselves. C'mon, run smart a client that actually knows what it's working with (emails) rather than pretending everything is a web page, and let that 386SX be 97% idle instead of 99%.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Even Marissa Mayer Google's VP of Search Products and User Experience uses PINE for her business email:
Sorry about the crappiness of the website I linked to, but CNN doesn't know how to design for FF yet.
You must be related to this /.er.
BTW, fuel injection was available on the '57 Bel Air.
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
I found that it was easier for me to configure mutt to do just that. I was actually using mutt and msmtp on my zaurus to read all the mail from my various accounts for a while. Then I decided I wanted to see graphics people sent me (without a separate app) so now I read my gmail with Mail.app ;)
Why gmail at all? because I use it for mailing lists that are publicly archived anyway so I don't care if they read all of it. There's enough space for me to subscribe to 10+ mailing lists and never have to worry about filling my box. Plus if I want to search for something I know that I have my own private archive of all the mailing lists that I subscribe to.
Chaos is Divine *
Stay tuned for the article on apples versus oranges. While many like the thick orange skin, record numbers are switching to the soft red skin of an apple.
Seriously, GMail and Pine do totally different things. What's the point?
espo
I presume you also need cookies as well, but I can't say, as I avoid gmail like the plague.
The best way to predict the future is to create it. - Peter Drucker.
snarfed found a bunch of greasemonkey scripts but he missed the important ones, which are at persistent.info. In particular, he'd probably be interested in:
m acros
a ck-become-a-gmail-master-161399.php
a il-macros.user.js
http://persistent.info/archives/2006/03/21/gmail-
and
http://www.lifehacker.com/software/gmail/hack-att
This post deals with my version of the macros script:
http://gr.ayre.st/~grayrest/greasemonkey/gmail/gm
* Filtering has a great UI, but it's horribly weak.
Agreed.
* There's no way to bounce an email. This should be pretty trivial to add.
dontcare
* If no email is selected, the Y key should archive the email under the cursor. This should be common sense.
This isn't part of the macros script, but it wouldn't be that hard to add. I don't usually archive one mail at a time, so this doesn't really bother me.
* You can't automatically create a filter based on an email. Why not?
Agreed. Even better, I'd appreciate mailing list support so that I could get rid of most of my tags.
* You can search, but you can't select messages based on headers, subject, or body text. Worse, if you have more messages than fit on the screen, you can't select any messages that aren't on the screen. If you ever get flooded with email, or with spam that escapes the spam filters, god help you.
Again, search is your friend. If you have my version of the macros script, 'mat' on the results repeatedly.
* Thank god there are keyboard shortcuts...but there aren't nearly enough! I don't mind using the mouse for one-time stuff, but if i have to use it often during my normal email routine, that's a deal breaker. Keyboard shortcuts for go to label, go to sent mail/drafts, and select all/none/unread would be necessary if I was ever to go back to Gmail.
go to label: g+label
go to sent: g+sent
go to drafts: g+drafts
select: m + (a all, n none, u unread, s starred, t unstarred)
apply label: l+label
* Marking messages as read is impossible with the keyboard
'r'
additionally, mark as unread
'v'
* Selecting a message doesn't automatically move the cursor to the next message. This is just plain silly.
Again, not there, but simple to add to the script. I don't usually mark one message at a time...
* The Y key is horribly inconsistent. If you're in the Inbox, it archives. If you're in a label, it removes the label. If you're in spam or trash, it moves to the Inbox! This is a bad case of modal input.
'e' always removes from inbox.
* Gmail might be smart about (not) displaying quoted text, but it can't handle composing with quoted text to save its life.
Agreed but I don't find it difficult to manually remove quoted text.
The author says there is no "or" or "not" filter in gmail. There is at least an "or" in the gmail filter, I'm currently using it. It is the double bar "||" like in some programming languages for example:
"me@somewhere.com || you@someplace.com || them@thatplace.com"
--Mike
Outlook is also superior for auto-installation of help apps. With pine or gmail you have to download and run that attachment or word macro. Outlook does all that for you, although that feature is a little more limitted in recent versions.
Some people prefer A, some people prefer B. trying to convince people using rational arguments to change something they like or have grown deeply accustomed too usually results in them digging their heels in and sticking to their preferred thing.
On another level what is going on here is the CLI versus GUI debate on another level, a very interesting essay on which can be found here http://www.cryptonomicon.com/beginning.html
I recommend giving it a read.
Remember, different is not necessarily bad, its just not the 'good' you are used to. Learn to tell the difference.
Can't we all just get along
Comment removed based on user account deletion