360981 - Keep (and expand upon) the Eudora sense of humor

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Penelope Graveyard :: General, enhancement, P5)

Description

[Matt Dudziak]

From the wiki:

PS Also, please continue the silly and inane (and humanizing) comments like the "statue" you will erect in my honour should I register, or your description of complex headers as "Blah, Blah, Blah" etc...

If you agree that Penelope should have a sense of humor, vote for this bug.

Comment 1

[Basil M. Kyriakakis]

And my favorate is:

<x-eudora-setting:140> When checked, Eudora supports the Drag manager.©©  Setting reversed; use "n" for ON, "y" for OFF!

Invoke <x-eudora-setting:140> and see!

Comment 2

[Basil M. Kyriakakis]

And my favorite is:

<x-eudora-setting:140> When checked, Eudora supports the Drag manager.©©  Setting reversed; use "n" for ON, "y" for OFF!

Invoke <x-eudora-setting:140> and see!

Comment 3

[Ben Elkin]

One can't vote AGAINST a feature, therefore this comment. 

Penelope is going to be used by VERY different people from VERY different cultures, and a joke which excites an American teenager may irritate an older Russian. Also, a joke is not a joke after the 20th repetition. Furthermore, Penelope is going to be localized: ever tried to translate a joke?

I want Penelope to help me manage my mails -- not to read RSS etc., and least of all to try entertain me!

P.S. "Blah, Blah" as an icon is OK, I get used to it :-)

Comment 4

[Robin Darroch]

(In reply to comment #3)
> Penelope is going to be used by VERY different people from VERY different
> cultures, and a joke which excites an American teenager may irritate an older
> Russian. Also, a joke is not a joke after the 20th repetition. Furthermore,
> Penelope is going to be localized: ever tried to translate a joke?

This is a valid point.  However, I don't think anyone is suggesting we fill Penelope with "jokes" - rather that we don't insist on restricting it to the technical, staid and usually boring approach of most mail readers.  "Blah blah blah" is actually quite a descriptive short representation of "show full message headers and untranslated source code".  Of course, it is entirely possible when localizing a product into a different language to do away with a particular linguisting/culturally-dependent play on words altogether.  

In the end, the point of this feature is that Penelope should be as friendly and playful (in a non-obstructive way) as Eudora currently is - the coffee cup icon for "Getting Started", for example, and the chillies for "Mood Watch".  Of course, if you felt strongly about it not even doing that, you could ask for the inclusion of a "Be boring" preference, at which point staid and technical descriptions copied from Thunderbird and Outlook would replace all of Eudora's friendly versions.

I don't think anyone's suggesting we have Eudora start up saying "An Englishman, an Irishman and a Scotsman walk into a bar..."

Comment 5

[Ben Elkin]

(In reply to comment #4)

>"Blah blah blah" is actually quite a descriptive short representation of 
>"show full message headers and untranslated source code".

No, "Blah.." is short but NOT descriptive representation. It's nice as an icon,

> the coffee cup icon for "Getting Started", for example, 
> and the chillies for "Mood Watch" 

- and these icons are also OK, exactly because they are icons. But otherwise, I would prefer clearly written descriptions, and please, no "statues" in my honor.

> you could ask for the inclusion of a "Be boring" preference

I don't want Penelope be boring, I want it to be inobtrusive. 

And (related point) I don't want it to watch my mood and see those chillies at all! I would rather prefer it to auto-detect the language in which the specific message (or part of it written) and then apply the proper spell-checker.

> at which point staid and technical descriptions copied from 
> Thunderbird and Outlook would replace all of Eudora

Still another related point, description like Thunderbird`s "accessibility.accesskeycausesactivation" may be technical, but cryptic. 

The point is to make Eudora easy and pleasant to use. Things like <x-eudora-setting:140> make it slightly more DIFFICULT to use, as they add one more unnecessary setting just for fun. 

After all, the whole thing is really a minor point. I just hope the developers would invest their valuable time into something really useful, e.g. into having readable explanation for every setting. 

Comment 6

[Joseph W Donahue]

I am in full agreement with #4 and #5.  I voted for this because it's in keeping with my personal view that Penelope should be as much like Eudora as possible (minus the defects)and because it's not really going to take much effort.

Comment 7

[D.J.]

(In reply to comment #3)
> One can't vote AGAINST a feature, therefore this comment. 
> 
> Penelope is going to be used by VERY different people from VERY different
> cultures, and a joke which excites an American teenager may irritate an older
> Russian. Also, a joke is not a joke after the 20th repetition. Furthermore,
> Penelope is going to be localized: ever tried to translate a joke?
> 
> I want Penelope to help me manage my mails -- not to read RSS etc., and least
> of all to try entertain me!
> 
> P.S. "Blah, Blah" as an icon is OK, I get used to it :-)

Eudora has never told jokes or got in the way of reading my email. It does present error messages in a manner that is more pleasent than the likes of micro$loth. That's one thing I like about it. When a password error or other login error happens you get the "shhh, don't tell any one" message. Hardly offensive in any culture. Simply a more friendly of relating to a user. I much prefer a program that treats me like a user (human) than a programmer or another computer. I vote for this bug.

Comment 8

[Max]

I particularly liked when Eudora would tell me when I mistakenly scheduled an e-mail for some time in the past that it's not a time machine.  I realized my mistake, but it told me in a nice way without making me feel (at least too much) like an idiot.

Comment 9

[Sylvestre Ledru [:Sylvestre]]

Penelope didn't see any activity in the vcs for the last 8 years, closing.