Pine controversy

[Joe Mabel]

I'll chime in again.

1) Pine is an OK server-side solution.  People who are comfortable with a 
text interface aren't going to find Pine hard.  Let's not stop supporting 
Pine.

2) Windows users are now very numerous.  Pine is not a very friendly way 
for them to get thier mail.  One or another sort of POP connection solution 
probably is.  We should let people know they can do this with an SCN email 
account.  We should ask the library what their plans are for this as they 
go to Windows.  We should certainly try to work with them on where they are 
going.  If where they are going constitutes a decent solution for Windows 
users in general, life is prettysimple: add the library's solution to our 
training.  However, their solution may not be very typical because they 
resumably dont want people's email ending up stored on a particular library 
workstation, whereas the average user working from home wants their own 
disk as their mail repository.

-----Original Message-----
From:	Al Boss [SMTP:alboss at scn.org]
Sent:	Tuesday, September 29, 1998 10:42 AM
To:	scn at scn.org
Subject:	Re: Pine controversy

Maybe we're looking at the wrong thing.

Our model has always been (correctly, I think) mostly based around
server-side solutions.  Whether we like its interface or not, SCN is
accessible via anything from a TRS-80 to a Cray.  Yet, this
"user-friendly e-mail" discussion is mostly focusing on client-side
solutions.  (I still question the efficacy of defining "user-friendly"
without a representative sampling of the users, but that's another
discussion.)

What would it take to instead adopt a Web-based e-mail model option for
SCN?  These other guys all took our idea of free e-mail, so why don't we
return the favor by exploring inventing our own version of their idea?

* Yes, it'd be a programming challenge.  We have smart people, though;
I'd bet we can do it if we decide it's a priority.
* No, the users and the libraries wouldn't have to configure anything
special on their computers, like POP settings, etc.
* Yes, it'd be resource-intensive.  Any worse than the other long-term
options we've discussed (PPP, mostly)?  Any easier to achieve?  Since
system load would be limited to those who already have a GUI, I'd think
it would by definition hit our servers less than offering SLIP/PPP.
Which brings us to...
* No, it wouldn't give a graphical interface to people who don't already
have a graphical interface. (That is, if you had no SLIP/PPP or greater
connection, you'd still have text-only access.)  But that's another
discussion, too.

I'm sure there's a perfectly good reason why this is a really bad idea.
Anyone want to torpedo it quickly so we can get back to the e-mail holy
wars?
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