Pine controversy

[Bill Scott]

Joe;

I hope I don't sound like Pine is the answer to all the world's problems,
obviously that's not the case. Some people are obviously more comfortable with
Outlook, Eudora, Netscape Communicator or who knows how many others. There may
even be a few left who actually like to do their mail while in Emacs. There is
no one wonderful perfect mail agent for everyone.

The point of my comment back to Lorraine was that Pine has been described
as "extremely difficult" and "too hard for new users to learn".  I don't think
that's accurate. The experience at Speakeasy dealing with 'Joe Average' as
well as lots of students at the UW who have Pine provided to them indicates that
it is a quite usable way to handle e-mail for lots of people. There are plenty
of commercial ISPs that provide Pine as the e-mail program of choice.

I hope that in time we can make PPP or Slip connections available to those who
want them. At that point users will be able to use just about any mail program
they want to, which will no doubt add to the confusion of training the new
folks, but is still a good idea. As far as I know that's not something that can
be accomplished in the near future. We have only a few people who have the
skills to implement PPP or Slip on our system and they unfortunately have real
lives, day jobs etc. that take up some of their time. Until that can be
accomplished Pine seems to be a quite workable way to provide e-mail on SCN. We
need to figure out better ways to provide introductory training for new users
(and old ones too if needed). Acting like Pine was developed by an Ogre
conjured up by the Wicked Witch of the West doesn't get us anywhere - It's here,
it works, it's supported and it should serve the purpose until other things are
available. And by the way PINE 4.03 does some new things with URLs that might
interest some, along with some other new bells and whistles. Don't know but I'd
bet we'll see that version long before we see PPP connections.

Bill S
billhs at speakeasy.org  "Two of the most famous products of U.C. Berkeley
bk846 at scn.org          are LSD and UNIX. Is this a coincidence ? "


On Thu, 1 Oct 1998, Joe Mabel wrote:

> 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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