"Casey Tompkins" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 24 Jul 2007 16:07:35 -0500, "Don Pyeatt"
wrote:

Hi, Casey !

I have been avoiding this yEnc/OE thread but after reading your post I
thought you may perhaps be the one to answer my as-yet unanswered
question:
What will your agent do that OE will not, except of course decode yEnc
without an add-on patch?

I have formed the opinion after reading these hate-OE threads over the
years
that those who hate OE simply don't know how to use it.

What say you?

Without going into exhaustive detail, Don, that's like asking what MS
Word can do, that Wordpad can't? You have the cart and the horse
backwards. Both Wordpad and OE are targeted to very specific and
narrow uses. OE is an email program with limited newsreading ability.
Similarly, Wordpad may act as an elemental word processor.

I can speak with some authority on this, as my first PC used CP/M, not
MS-DOS, and I remember the dreaded EDLIN, the only text editor
available to early versions of MS-DOS. It was a line-editor. That is,
one could edit text one line at a time. You had to type commands along
the lines of "edit line 3" and then you could perform primitive
editing similar to command-line editing until WinXP.

Then along (finally) comes WordPad, which is a freebie included with
the latest Windows. Considered as a basic word processor (compared to
the 80s stuff) it is excellent. WYSIWYG, different fonts on-screen,
in-place editing on-screen, italics, boldface, etc, etc. After Valdocs
that's exciting!

But... Compared to a real modern word processor -or even a powerful
text editor such as TextPad or EMACS, Wordpad is primitive.

To put it another way, OE to a modern newsreader as MS Paint is to
Adobe Photoshop.

I don't hate OE per se, as an email utility. I loathe it as an example
of how MicroSoft allowed it to become one of the world's worst
vulnerability magnet.

There are free programs which are head and shoulders above what MS
produces for email, newsgroups, and the web. I've mentioned Agent
already. The Mozilla Firefox brower and Mozilla Sunbird email client
are the best of the best. If you want to see what's going to be added
to the next edition of Internet Explorer, just check out what's
current (or old {g}) in Firefox and Sunbird. The Mozilla products are
more secure than equivalent MS products, more stable, more advanced,
and one helluva lot cheaper.

To get back to your original point, I know how to use OE; I just don't
see the point; any more than I see the point of using WordPad as a
word processor. (which reminds me: OpenOffice, anyone?) There are far
more powerful freeware applications out there. OE is comparatively
primitive, and a security nightmare. If I could rip it out by the
roots from WinXP, I would do so in a heartbeat.

I think my earlier analogy still holds: you can use a truck as a
tractor, but that doesn't make it a good idea. OE is not a newsgroup
reader.

I'll also repeat my earlier statment: much of the argument can be
avoided by posting via newgroup reader and not using yEnc. I have no
problem doing that, just to keep the peace. Alas, the best freeware
auto-poster is Power Post v11b, AKA Power Post v11b-yEnc. Are there
any yEnc-hating hackers out there who would be willing to (ahhh...)
"yEnc" that code out of the program to allow standard bulk posting?

Please excuse the pun.


Thanks, Casey.

Unfortunately, after all the subjective comparisons you used, you have not
answered my basic question. To repeat:

Other than yEnc, "What will your agent do that OE will not?"

This former CP/M and DOS user just wants a straight answer.

Please be objective.

Don