On     Thu,    14     Jan    1993     19:41:35    EST     Bayla    Singer
<[log in to unmask]> said:
 
>Now, in the novice (starter-default) menu for elm, there is no hint that
>such a command exists.  The headers one does see take  up half a screen,
>and how  shall the unwary  know there's  more? Further, the  'h' command
>when  struck   once,  simply  flashes  the   successive  headers,  about
>half-a-secondeach, on the first line of the screen before laying out the
>stable message. It's  only on the third or fourth  frustrated smack that
>everything goes as it should: an  lo and behold, there's the 'From' line
>with an address  that I can write  down and then enter  manually to send
>private mail.
>
>Elm is  a widely-used  mailsystem. The information  I would  have needed
>doesn't appear in the manuals I've  been given (on two systems now). The
>computer experts at  the info lines didn't have a  clue. PLEASE, all you
>wizards, try to remember how it was before you knew all that good stuff?
 
But I am not  blaming you. My reaction when reading  your message was not
"gee, what a stupid user!" but "that's what you get when you decide to go
unix to save hardware bucks and dump  it on your users, then find out the
hard way that  it isn't quite as user-friendly as  the press and computer
wizes said, and now  you're faced with leaving the users  out in the cold
or spending  the saved hardware  money you've already used  for something
else hiring  more user support  people". Myself  I would never  subject a
"normal" user  to a unix command,  I'd suggest a PC  with a user-friendly
interface that would download the mail from the unix system.
 
unix mail programs (and unix commands in general) are designed for people
who know all the  options by heart and want to get as  much work done per
keystroke as possible. This is why options and commands (within mail) are
a single letter, and that in turn  is why they are not intuitive (the few
"intuitive" letter/function associations are quickly  used up and you get
to use the remaining letters for new functions). Most of these people are
computer programmers, and  to them it is "obvious" that  'E' and 'e' mean
something  totally different,  because  they know  all  the commands  and
options. Unfortunately  management types usually don't  realize that when
they decide  to dump  a perfectly  working VAX and  replace it  with more
fashionable  unix machines.  But then  this is  turning into  a religious
argument.
 
  Eric