On Tue, Aug 13, 2002 at 10:22:56AM -0400, Charlie Summers wrote:
At 4:52 AM -0400 8/13/02, Tapani Tarvainen is rumored to have typed:
Looks like nobody else has to deal with not-too-computer-savvy moderators...
Of course we do; however, if they aren't computer-saavy, they likely aren't using pine, or mutt, or elm, or anything else on *nix. They are probably using Outlook Express on Windows
I guess I'm in a somewhat unusual environment, but here most non-computer-geeks using email at all use pine (because that's the first thing new students are being taught and second because there're a number of ancient text-only boxes (386s running Linux) available as public-access email boxes around the campus). So I'm faced with a large number of people who use pine for email but are confused by the notion of "command line"... and some diehards using elm (most a bit more computer-savvy but not necessarily much, and they generally don't want to memorize anything new if they can help it); fortunately elm also has | so the solution I suggested for pine works there as well. As for Outlook Express, well, even people who like Windows (yes, there are such) don't like that monstrosity, and since our Windows admins systematically remove it from new installations nobody learns to use it by default. I'd still be interested in which (if any) Windows or web-based or even Unix-based GUI-type email clients can manage custom headers comfortably or at all, and how.
(If someone is using *nix on their desk machine, they can still use the kludges we've applied for the OE croud, and so don't need to know how to apply custom header fields anyway.)
But why shouldn't they, when it's the easiest way? As instructions go, "Forward it and insert in the beginning the text 'Approved: ...'" is no easier than "type '|a' and hit return". Besides I rather want it to be easier on unixy clients... ;-) -- Tapani Tarvainen