root@nccnat.UUCP (Paul Shields) (04/09/88)
I've been using readnews, postnews, and horrible mailer software for the last 6 months. My problem is that people who I must train on Usenet have difficulty dealing with the many different user interfaces available. (I haven't looked at rn, but I can't use it because I have to port the software to lots of other operating systems, not all of them multitasking.) Further, I noticed fundamental similarities in the way mail and news articles *CAN* be presented to the user, and was wondering if anyone has taken the approaches below. If your favourite software does this already, PLEASE tell me: Send me mail. If nothing like this exists, I'll write it. - When sending mail, the user selects the primary recipient, writes the message, then has the option to CC it to other users *or* post it to the net. - New mail is read by the same interface as news, but is always presented first in the list. - When someone posts a FOLLOWUP article, the Reply-To field, if present, causes a copy of the article to be mailed to the original poster. The effects of this that I can see are: it becomes *much* easier to take part in a rapid conversation, because mail gets around faster than news. And, it allows the user to control the distribution of the message a little more carefully. For instance, (a) send only to original poster, (b) send only to those people who have contributed to the conversation, (c) change the distribution entirely. Sure, this IS possible to do already, but I have a heckofa time training people to use it. Don't let me reinvent the self-sharpening widget! Mail me your responses, Please! -- Paul Shields, Before going out to save the world, I remembered shields@yunccn.UUCP that the world doesn't want to be saved. or yunccn!nccnat!root. Perhaps it can be convinced?