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Sat, 16 Jan 1993 01:15:14 +0100 |
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I am looking for a user-friendly "LISTSERV client" for both PC and Mac
which would take end-users by the hand and guide them through the
procedures of signing up to lists, signing off, reviewing lists, getting
a copy of the list of lists with some search string (the whole list
usually exceeds gateway limits), and so on. Apart from the obvious
general benefits of having nice interactive clients for network servers,
there is a particular problem with the Mac: the mail package most people
seem to use over here, Quickmail, adds some sort of letterhead inside the
message body (in the local language of course). You can't teach a typical
Mac user to carefully delete the thing, or then to add a // JOB line to
get LISTSERV to ignore it. Another problem I have with Mac users is that
their idea of a user-friendly version of SET XYZ-L REPRO is "Hej, jag
undrade bara om det fanns m|jlighet att {ndra n}t i mitt listserv s} att
man f}r en kopia av varje brev man skickat till listan? Tack f|r
hj{lpen!". Since LISTSERV can't handle this type of requests yet, they
get sent to a human being, usually the wrong one, and eventually make
their way into my mailbox after a couple forward operations. This is a
waste of time for several people and introduces delays which wouldn't
exist if a client were available. I don't know anything about window/icon
systems but the task is not very complicated, there are just a handful of
menus and functions. However providing an interface for each and every
mail system under the sun might be a problem. Anyway if you know of any
such client, please let me know. There might be a possibility for me to
inject a Mac client as a local "student project", but since I am not a
teacher it might not work. There is also the EARN office where at least a
PC version could be developed. But I think this would be a significant
improvement to the end-user problems we have been discussing on LSTOWN-L.
Eric
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