Going GUI...er

[Sam Kuper]

On Thu, Apr 23, 2020 at 03:52:53PM -0500, Derek Martin wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 20, 2020 at 03:49:46PM +0100, Sam Kuper wrote:
>> On Fri, Apr 17, 2020 at 06:08:37PM -0500, Derek Martin wrote:
>>> On Fri, Apr 10, 2020 at 01:09:12PM +0100, Sam Kuper wrote:
>>>> On Thu, Apr 09, 2020 at 09:32:01AM -0500, Derek Martin wrote:
>>>>> On Wed, Apr 08, 2020 at 01:17:12PM +0100, Sam Kuper wrote:
>>>>>> On Tue, Apr 07, 2020 at 09:23:34PM -0500, Derek Martin wrote:
>>>>>>> Sorry, but this is an archaic way of looking at the problem.
>>>>>>> People have been doing this for decades now, has become the
>>>>>>> norm, common practice, and really it is therefore WE who are
>>>>>>> being inconsiderate by not accepting de facto standards that
>>>>>>> have been widely adopted for a very long time.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> I disagree.  You have made a "roads were built for cars"
>>>>>> argument*: it assumes that today's "de facto standard" trumps
>>>>>> historical precedent and considerate behaviour.
>>> 
>>> And by the way, I ignored this point originally, but doesn't it?
>> 
>> No, it doesn't.
>> 
>> Inconsiderate behaviour is by definition inconsiderate.
> 
> When you're talking about a population of people, who is being
> inconsiderate, those who do what the majority prefer, or the minority
> who have made up their own mind that their way is better despite
> what everyone else does?

That's a false dichotomy.


>> Likewise, the fact that something is currently popular does not make
>> it good.
> 
> It does make it *preferred* though,

If you mean "preferred" in the sense of "popular", then yes; that's
tautological.

But if you mean it in the sense of "good", then you seem to have
conceded my point.

Bad passwords are popular.  They are not preferred.


> which is how you have to define what is considerate.  Inconsiderate is
> doing something that is not preferred.  That which is least preferred
> is most inconsiderate.

Again, no.  You are conflating two different concepts, as shown by the
following counterexample.  In some *urban* subcultures, driving large
4x4 cars is preferred:
https://www.macmillandictionary.com/buzzword/entries/chelsea-tractor.html
. Yet that is clearly not considerate.  It is inconsiderate because
those cars are less safe than alternatives of similar or lower cost,
including alternatives that provide comparable luggage space and
legroom, etc.  Specifically, the large 4x4s, compared to those other
vehicles in those contexts, are less safe for occupants (lower occupant
safety scores), for bystanders (lower bystander safety scores), and for
the local and global environments (higher emissions of particulate and
climate change pollutants).

Moreover, you appear to be committing the logical fallacy called
"argumentum ad populum" (aka "majoritarianism").


> If you can't agree with that, we may as well stop discussing it.

Up to you.

I've been trying to respond constructively to your points, because:

- on the one hand, I sympathise with your wish to have an email client
  that is even more capable than Mutt while sacrificing none of Mutt's
  good qualities;

- on the other hand, some of your arguments are unsound, and this
  undercuts the strength of your case.

That said, I'm not sure I'll continue to contribute to this thread.


>>> Technological evolution is about as democratic as it gets...
>> 
>> I disagree.  Consumption is ultimately constrained by the choices
>> available to consumers.
> 
> No, it isn't.  If you are skilled, you can obtain resources to make
> what you want.

First of all, nobody has infinite skill.

As for real people: no, they can't necessarily "obtain resources to make
what [they] want".  They are, as I stated, constrained by the choices
available to them.  Those constraints include:

- the laws of physics. (Counterexample to prove my point: want to travel
  faster than light? Good luck with that.);

- the laws of economics/psychology (Counterexample to prove my point:
  want people to work for you, when the company next door offers better
  pay for otherwise the exact same terms and prospects?  Good luck with
  that.);

- the resources available to them (Counterexample to prove my point:
  want to open a public gay bar in your hometown, but you grew up in
  Riyadh?  Good luck with that.).



>> If a region's developers and government planners, etc, space houses
>> far apart and provide negligible public transport or cycling
>> infrastructure but plentiful cars and car-oriented infrastructure,
>> cars will predominate there because the region's consumers are
>> hampered in pursuing other choices.
> 
> You've just made the case that the roads WERE built for cars.  The
> ones we have today, anyway. =8^)

No.

First of all, many of the roads that exist today, in many parts of the
world, predate cars.

Secondly, many of the other roads that exist today were intended for
multiple classes of vehicle.

I do belive (and have never denied) that *some* roads were built
exclusively for cars, high-speed buses, trucks and motorcycles.
Freeways are the most obvious example, because in most jurisdictions
access to freeways is denied to other classes of vehicle.


>> Technological evolution is no more democratic than is a gerrymandered
>> district rife with vote suppression and dubious publicity.
> 
> Of course it is.  I have dollars.  I can spend them on new technology
> or not.  Just because it exists, doesn't mean I must buy it.  In that
> regard, I directly influence what gets made.  If no one buys it, that
> company will cease to exist, and stop making their thing--and another
> will sprout with a different thing.  Rinse and repeat.  The things
> that are the most popular win (get made and sold).  That's basically
> the definition of democracy.

There are so many errors here that it's hard to know where to begin.
It's a Gish gallop!

First: under most fair voting systems, the distribution of votes in a
true democratic election is equal.  Each eligible person gets exactly
one vote to "spend".  But this is clearly untrue of the distribution of
dollars; some people have more dollars than others do.  So, dollar
expenditure is *not* democratic.

Secondly, a consumer's purchasing influence is indirect.  For instance,
popular products and services are sometimes withdrawn, even though
people are paying for them.  That's not to say consumers have no
influence on producers - they do - but it is indirect, rather than
direct.

Thirdly, what you can buy with the dollars you have is entirely
constrained by what is *available* to buy for that many dollars (and
also by other demands on those dollars).  For instance, if you live in
an apartment in a "food desert", you might have difficulty buying or
growing healthy food at an affordable price.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_desert

And so on...


> The most I can do is vote for whomever is not a member of the
> currently in-power party and hope that enough people do that the new
> electees will effect legislation to gerrymander to keep their own
> party in power, rather than the current one.  It's largely not worth
> even considering.

This is incomprehensible.


>>> Just ask BetaMax.
>> 
>> That's a quagmire of a topic!
> 
> But it's a well-known example that, details aside, succinctly captures
> the essence of both sides of a particular  debate.

Details matter, especially when they give the lie to a myth.


>> Betamax machines couldn't generally play or record VHS tapes and
>> vice versa:  "Customers had to choose between the two as tapes and
>> machines were not compatible between the two
> 
> Exactly.  e-mail users have to chose between the two email formats and

No, they don't.

First of all, plain text email is *always* valid email, so there's no
need for any user to choose against it.

Secondly, a user who wishes to do so can send *both* formats, in a
multipart message, and let the recipient (or their MUA) decide which to
view.

> clients are not (fully) compatible between the two...

Again false.

Any true email client (MUA) is capable of letting the user read plain
text email.

Some email clients are also capable of letting the user read some kinds
of rich text email.


> Every decision has tradeoffs.  One choice may be better for
> YOU, but not necessarily for the majority.  The majority clearly
> prefer HTML mail.  Opinion polls show that, and my epxerience outside
> of technical mailing lists overwhelmingly supports it.

Again, I've no objection to people sending HTML email as long as they do
so considerately, i.e. in a way that doesn't prevent their recipients
from viewing the emails meaningfully in plain text clients.


>> By contrast, non-GUI MUAs *can* often render at least some parts of
>> HTML emails
> 
> And by not being able to render them whole, they are deficient
> compared to those which can.

Except in the common cases where this "deficiency" helps to protect the
privacy, security and system resources of the user.


>>> But even so, you're basically saying, "It was this way, and so it
>>> must always be; no evolution of technology should be permitted."
>> 
>> No.  That is not my position, and I have made no such assertion.
> 
> You have by inference. Your position on HTML mail roughly equates to
> it.  First there was text-only e-mail.  Then things got better, and
> made graphical e-mail possible.  Then things got cheaper, and
> graphical e-mail became widely available, and became the norm.  You're
> saying that's inconsiderate.  I'm saying it's just natural evolution,
> and you are being inconsiderate by demanding that the majority cater
> to you.

First, technological change != *natural* evolution.  To suggest
otherwise is to engage in fallacious inevitabilism, and also to risk a
fall into the progress trap: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progress_trap

I have no *blanket* opposition to technological change.  If you want to
read my emails in a GUI MUA, that's your prerogative.

I send emails in a format that should be readable in every extant MUA of
which I am aware.  That is considerate of me.

But if your boss sends you an email that you can't read because you
don't use a MUA like his, then that *is* inconsiderate of him, and also
of the developers of that MUA for enabling it to send incompatible
messages.


> It's a Harrison Bergeron argument.  Let's all dumb down to the least
> common denominator.

No, it isn't.  But I *was* making an accessibility argument.

At the risk of analogising again: you may prefer stairs, but some people
need a wheelchair ramp or an elevator.  Ideally, buildings should
provide at *least* a wheelchair ramp: out of the three technologies,
ramps tie with stairs for best reliability and tie with elevators for
best accessibility.  But by all means stairs and/or an elevator could be
added if costs allow, for people who prefer those mediums over ramps.



>>>> I *disagree* that by the mid 90s, most GUI MUAs could handle this.
>>> 
>>> I may be off by a few years, and it's fairly difficult to collect
>>> data about what e-mail clients supported what features when, but I
>>> certainly recall getting tons of complaints about it by the time I
>>> was in my first sysadmin job where I also had to do desktop support,
>>> which was in 1997.
>>> 
>>> It doesn't really matter.
>> 
>> This seems inconsistent on at least two separate fronts.
> 
> But it is actually inconsistent on neither.

As a pantomime audience would correctly say: Oh yes it is!


>>    Clearly, then, you were mistaken to imply that such email was
>>    unproblematic during that period.
> 
> I didn't mean to imply that; it's always been a problem for some
> segment of the e-mail using population.

But you did imply it; hence the inconsistency.


>> 2. You said earlier that "If you're talking about historical
>>    precedence then time scale very much is the point."  But then you
>>    said, "I may be off by a few years ... It doesn't really matter."
> 
> 2-3 years is a much smaller discrepancy than several millenia.  There
> was vastly more precedence for roads being used by non-car things than
> there was widespread e-mail use not involving GUI clients, discounting
> the previously mentioned small fraction of the population who are
> technically-oriented humans, whether it happened in 3 years or 6.  Of
> course now, even most of those prefer HTML mail.

> The ascii ribbon campaign was entirely abandoned by the early 2010's
> or so.

Not entirely ;)


>>> The point is by now, the feature has been available in the vast
>>> majority of major e-mail clients for a very long time, and is in
>>> widespread use.  You can rail against technological evolution if you
>>> like, but that doesn't help people get work done.  All I'm after is
>>> to not have to fight with my tools to get them to show me what
>>> everyone else around me can see effortlessly.
>> 
>> By "effortlessly", you seem to mean, "at substantial risk to their
>> privacy and security".
> 
> I mean no such thing.

I think you do.

I'm not suggesting that those users *know* that they are putting their
privacy and security at risk by using those tools in those ways.  But
that "effortlessness" comes at a hefty (and for the time being,
inevitable) cost.  Just because someone doesn't notice the cost doesn't
mean they aren't paying it.


>> We've been over this already in this thread.
> 
> Yes, indeed I refuted that point by pointing out you can disable it in
> virtually all existing HTML-mail-capable clients,

By the time you have disabled all the security/privacy risks inherent to
HTML-rendering MUAs, you end up with a pretty similar view on the emails
to the ones available in Mutt (or Mutt + w3m/Lynx/etc), but you still
have a larger attack surface.

That's not a great trade-off.


> and in ones that don't exist yet that you're designing, you can do
> whatever you want.

No; there are technical and resource-oriented limitations.  Developers
are not omnipotent.


> Gmail lets me disable it by default and enable it on a per-message or
> per-sender basis.  That's perfect.  And I use it, for those things I'm
> willing to use gmail for...

Gmail might let users prevent *some* third party tracking, but it
doesn't let users prevent Gmail's own built-in tracking.


>> Non-plain text email is *not* objectively better.  It has numerous
>> significant problems (privacy, security, compatibility, complexit),
>> as already indicated in this thread.
> 
> Except we've already established that NONE of those are required
> elements in order to render HTML mail, except for the complexity, "as
> already indicated in this thread."

Er, no.  If you want to be able to render HTML emails having elements
that call external resources (e.g. img elements whose src attributes
point to images hosted on third-party servers), then you have to choose
between privacy and security on the one hand, vs rendering the email "as
intended" on the other.  It's not just a matter of complexity.


> Complexity is only a problem when people aren't willing to make the
> effort to make it work,

Some forms of complexity are irreducable.  Combinatorial explosions can
create irreducable complexity.

The more different kinds of document you expect your MUA to handle, the
more complex it becomes, in a way that may well outstrip any realistic
resources to handle the complexity securely, no matter how willing the
developers are to try to make it work.


>>> And to be able to read what my boss sent me... whatever it might be.
>> 
>> Even if it contains tracking beacons or other forms of
>> spyware/malware?  If so, that sounds like being unhealthily in thrall
>> to your boss :(
> 
> I'm quite sure (quite literally) it does not.

It's very hard to be certain about these things.  See (again) the link
in my footer for an example of how hard they can be to detect.

I'm not claiming your boss *is* sending you malware, let alone
deliberately.  But I am reiterating that it is *very* hard to be sure
that an email is not malicious, especially in the context of complex
emails and complex MUAs.  It is hard for the MUA to be sure; it is hard
for anti-malware packages to be sure; and it is hard for users to be
sure.


> And if he wants to send me such things at work, for work, that's his
> prerogative.  I don't have to like it, but I DO need to read it.

That seems to be evidence that either you *are* unhealthily in thrall to
your boss, or that you live in an autocratic part of the world.

In less autocratic parts of the world, an employer is just an employer,
not a king.  They do *not* have infinite prerogative.  They *cannot*
lawfully breach a person's human rights (privacy is a human right under
international law) arbitrarily.

But if you are in a jurisdictions that fails to uphold your rights,
and/or you do for example work for a king or in some other dictatorial
hierarchy (North Korean civil service?), then of course your head might
literally roll if you don't read your boss's email.




> Currently my only real option is to fire up Microsoft Outlook.
> Wouldn't it be vastly better if I could read them in a GUI client that
> had Mutt's philosophy, that actually does care about its users'
> security and privacy?

If a GUI client existed that:

- was as powerful and ergonomic as Mutt;

- was as backwards-compatible as Mutt;

- protected users' security and privacy as well as Mutt does (including
  by being free as in freedom, i.e. libre); and

- integrated with CLI tools as well as Mutt does.

Then yes, this would be wonderful.

But it doesn't exist yet, and for the reasons I gave previously, it is
unlikely to exist any time soon.

Meanwhile, in the real world, Mutt does exist and seems to be about the
best, most standards-compliant MUA around.  So, if anyone send you
emails that aren't easily readable in Mutt, shame on them.


> And by the way, here's another news flash:  Most people just don't
> care about privacy anymore, and that prevents YOUR privacy.  I happen
> to care about privacy... but I consider it completely futile. [...]
> Privacy on the Internet is just about nonexistent.  Get over it.  Or
> get off of it.

You seem to be engaging in black-and-white thinking (aka "binary
thinking" or "splitting":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Splitting_(psychology) ).

There is a huge middle ground where most people exist.  Those of us who
care about privacy should be working to tip the needle towards greater
privacy.  This doesn't mean that anything short of perfection is
worthless.


> Worried about using gmail?  They already have most of your mail,
> because of their massive user base and their web search engine.

Yes.  I posted the link to Benjamin Mako Hill's piece about that,
earlier in this thread.


-- 
A: When it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: When is top-posting a bad thing?

()  ASCII ribbon campaign. Please avoid HTML emails & proprietary
/\  file formats. (Why? See e.g. https://v.gd/jrmGbS ). Thank you.