Sup FAQ
-------
Q: What does Sup stand for?
-A: "What's up?".
-Q: How is Sup even possible?
-A: Sup is only possible through the hard work of Dave Balmain, the
- author of ferret.
+A: It stands for "what's up?", which is more or less the question I'm
+ asking when I read my mail.
+
+Q: If you love GMail so much, why not just use it?
- I started using Ferret when it was still slightly buggy, and it
- seemed like every week Dave released a bugfix or a speed
- improvement that directly affected sup. Ferret has become a
- first-class piece of software, and it's due to the tremendous
- amount of time and effort he's put in to it.
+A: I hate using a mouse, and I hate ads, and I hate non-programmability
+ and non-extensibility.
Q: Why the console?
-A: As the millions (ok, hundreds) of mutt users will tell you, there are
- many advantages to the console:
- - You don't need web browser.
- - Instantaneous interaction.
- - A few keystrokes can accomplish the work of a hundred mouse
- clicks.
+A: There are many advantages to the console. As any Unix user knows, a
+ few keystrokes can accomplish the work of a hundred mouse clicks.
+ Also, you don't need web browser, and you get instantaneous response
+ and a simple interface.
-Q: If you love GMail so much, why not just use it?
-A: I hate using a mouse, and I hate ads, and I hate non-programmability.
+ That said, a good Ajax programmer could probably replicate GMail
+ pretty easily using Sup as the backend.
Q: How does Sup deal with spam?
A: You can manually mark messages as spam, which prevents them from
Maybe one day I'll do a huge search-and-replace on the code, but it
doesn't seem that important at this point.
+Q: How is Sup possible?
+A: Sup is only possible through the hard work of Dave Balmain, the
+ author of ferret, which is the search engine behind Sup. Ferret is
+ really a first-class piece of software, and it's due to the
+ tremendous amount of time and effort he's put in to it.
+
Mutt's excellent threading features, simply because there's so much of
it---a single thread can span several pages, and God help you if you
lag behind. And Mutt is probably the best email client out there in
-terms of threading and mailing list support.
-
-The principle problem with traditional clients is that they place a
-high mental cost on the user for each incoming email, by forcing them
-to ask:
- - Should I keep this email, or delete it?
- - If I keep it, where should I file it?
-
-For example, I've spent the last 10 years of my life laboriously
-hand-filing every email message I received and feeling a mild sense of
-panic every time an email was both "from Mom" and "about school". The
-massive amounts of email that many people receive, and the cheap cost
-of storage, have made these questions both more costly and less useful
-to answer.
-
-As a long-time Mutt user, when I watched people use GMail, I saw them
-use email differently from how I had ever used it. I saw that making
-certain operations quantitatively easier (namely, search) resulted in
-a qualitative difference in usage. And I saw that thread-centrism had
-many advantages over message-centrism, especially when volume was high.
+terms of threading and mailing list support. God help me if I try and
+throw Thunderbird at that.
+
+The principle problem with traditional clients is that they deal with
+individual pieces of email, and place a high mental cost on the user
+for each incoming email, by forcing them to ask: Should I keep this
+email, or delete it? If I keep it, where should I file it?
+
+I've spent the last 10 years of my life laboriously hand-filing every
+email message I received and feeling a mild sense of panic every time
+an email was both "from Mom" and "about school". The massive amounts
+of email that many people receive, and the cheap cost of storage, have
+made these questions both more costly and less useful to answer.
+
+As a long-time Mutt user, when I first watched people use GMail, I saw
+them use email differently from how I had ever used it. I saw that
+making certain operations quantitatively easier (namely, search)
+resulted in a qualitative difference in usage: you don't have to worry
+about filing correctly, because you can always find things later by
+search. And I saw that thread-centrism had many advantages over
+message-centrism when message volume was high.
So, in many ways, I believe GMail has taken the right approach to
handle both of the factors above, and much of the inspiration for Sup
-was based on GMail. Ultimately, GMail wasn't right for me, which is
-why the idea for Sup was born.
+was based on GMail. I think it's to the GMail designers' credit that
+they started with a somewhat ad-hoc idea (hey, we're really good at
+search engines, so can we build an email client on top of one?) and
+managed to build something that was actually better than everything
+else out there. But ultimately, GMail wasn't right for me (see FAQ),
+which is why the idea for Sup was born.
Sup is based on the following principles, which I more or less stole
directly from GMail:
entire email archive eliminates most of the need for folders,
and eliminates the necessity of having to ever delete email.
-- Labels eliminate the remaining need for folders.
+- Labels eliminate what little need for folders that search doesn't
+ eliminate.
- A thread-centric approach to the UI is much more in line with how
- people operate than dealing with individual messages is. A message
- and its content deserve the same treatment in the vast majority
- of cases.
+ people operate than dealing with individual messages is. In the vast
+ majority of cases, a message and its context should be subject to
+ the same treatment.
Sup is also based on many ideas from mutt and Emacs and vi, having to
do with the fantastic productivity of a console- and keyboard-based
application, the usefulness of multiple buffers, the necessity of
handling multiple email accounts, etc.
+Give it a go and let me know what you think.
projects / sup / commitdiff