From: Charlie Summers charlie@lofcom.com
I honestly don't understand it. Can _anyone_ explain why using a web server to control a mailing list as simple to maintain as SmartList is a "good thing?"
"When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail".
Answer #1: Most of the world works with MUAs that make adding headers (i.e. lines to the header of messages) needlessly difficult.
Answer #2: Most of the world has a WWW browser that they have come to use for every sort of task, even when the task is more easily accomplished via a simple command.
Why? Because they don't have to remember what tasks can be accomplished or how to do those tasks; they simply choose from the options presented and the CGI script walks them through the process.
This is the CLI/GUI argument in a nutshell: one provides a simple (?) method to do (precisely ?) what you want if you can remember how to do it; the other provides a method of doing (approxminately) what you want without your having to remember much more than how to get to the starting point.
At 2:18 PM -0400 7/28/00, David R. Linn is rumored to have typed:
"When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail".
Well stated. Unfortunately. ;)
Charlie
smartlist@lists.rwth-aachen.de