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