Pine controversy

[Joe Mabel]

I'll say it once again: There's nothing wrong with Pine if you are just 
sending and receiving text email.  If, however, like a growing number of 
people, you are working in the Windows world, it's another story.

1) Windows programs have many features you can take for granted. Pine 
doesn't coincide with these.  Two trivial examples:
- if it's your reflex to hit <Home> to getto the beginning of the line, you 
have to engage the conscious brain to hit <Ctrl>-A.
- if it's your reflex to position the cursor with the mouse, you expect to 
be able to start typing into text where you just clicked.
I, for one, like to keep my conscious thinking on what I'm saying it, not 
on my tools.

2) In (say) Outlook, I can drag a file into my email and have an 
attachment.  I don't need to think about the file name.

3) If I'm in my (visual) browser and I want to copy the URL I'm looking at 
into an email, I select, copy, and paste.  Frankly, I can't even tell you 
the steps I'd have to take to get that into Pine without retyping. I'm sure 
there's a way, but I've never had the patience to work it out.

Pine is a good tool for what it is, but it's not the only email tool worth 
knowing about.  We need to help our users solve the problems they've got, 
not provide one all-purpose solution & say "if this doesn't fit you, you're 
not our target."

-----Original Message-----
From:	Bill S [SMTP:bk846 at scn.org]
Sent:	Thursday, October 01, 1998 12:41 PM
To:	Lorraine Pozzi
Cc:	Rod Clark; Al Boss; scn at scn.org
Subject:	Re: Pine controversy

On Tue, 29 Sep 1998, Lorraine Pozzi wrote:
                <snip>
>
> A couple of questions...
>
> Does Speakeasy still charge a fee for Pine classes?  And how come
> Speakeasy users were happy to shell out $$$$ to learn this
> extremely "difficult" program when we can't give it away?
         <snip>
Yes, Speakeasy does still run their classes on Saturdays and Sundays. The
new user orientation which includes PINE is $25.00. They include a hard
copy Pine manual with the class. They also offer a bunch of classes on
HTML, web design etc.

As I noted recently most afternoons and early evenings when I am at the
cafe or one of the RAIN site VT100 terminals around town there are people
waiting in line to use this "extremely difficult" e-mail program. Seems to
be no problem for at least most to pay $10.- a month to have an account
which includes shell access, Lynx, Pine and a wide variety of newsgroups.
They are using Pine 4.03 which has a lot of neat added bells and whistles
that are nice to have. Of course they have paid staff to run and update
their system.

Maybe they know something we don't ??????   No, I'm not suggesting
anything that would effect the 501C3 status but maybe there's something to
be learned.

>
> Lorraine
> femme2 at scn.org
>

Bill S
bk846 at scn.org
billhs at speakeasy.org

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