Yes, I know it would require a modern web browser. Is
this the Civil
War re-enactor list? Are my buttons and hardtack not authentic
enough? Why the emotional attraction to a mailing list as opposed to
the web?
Speaking entirely personally - because it's better.
(A) It doesn't require me to go check it; the mail shows up in my
mailbox along with all my other mail, rather than making me go
check N different web fora, N being the number of such lists I am
on.
(B) The interface is uniform across them all, and is chosen by *me*, by
my choice of MUA, not chosen according to someone else's idea of
what looks good or works well, and different for each forum.
(C) And if it truly does "require a modern web browser" (meaning some
GUI horror instead of something like lynx), there are additional
problems.
(C.i) It requires mouse use, rather than being purely keyboard driven.
(C.ii) It generally cannot be gotten out of reverse video (looking at
reverse video for any significant time is quite uncomfortable for
me, since I use a self-luminant display technology) and if it can
it usually breaks the inteface design badly.
(C.iii) They're big and bloated (lynx, source alone, is nearly twice as
big as my whole MUA including compiled binaries, and I don't even
want to think about a "modern" web browser).
(C.iv) "requires a modenr web browser" usually means "requires gaping
security holes like ActiveX or JavaScript", which are totally
unacceptable.
(C.v) Web browser text input fields are _not_ an acceptable substitute
for a real text editor - especially not *my choice of* text editor
(this harks back to point (B)).
There are probably others, but any one of those is reason enough to me.
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