bryden@vax1.acs.udel.EDU (Christopher F. Bryden) (06/11/89)
I've heard the rumor that the person who wrote MH is not going
to support it in the future. Does anybody know about the
status of MH and where bugs reports/fixes may be found? MH
was recently removed from being considered as a primary means
of inter-department communications here at the U of D. The
reasons give were the lack of support and inablility to set
it up for the novice user (not my decision, mind you). Does
anybody know of any reports on increases in effiency through
the use of MH? Does anybody have any personal comments they
would like to add? What other companies use MH?
Chris
--
arpa : bryden@vax1.acs.udel.edu | In the land of the fat, balding tourists,
bitnet: AIT05167 at ACSVM | the one eyed surfer dude is king.
plato : bryden/itpt/udel ----------------- I could turn you inside out
uucp : ...{unidot,uunet}!cfg!udel!udccvax1!bryden | ...what I choose not to do.wisner@mica.Berkeley.EDU (Bill Wisner) (06/11/89)
The person who wrote MH? THE person? Singular? Pray, do tell us who this person is. UCI MH is a group effort; many devoted hackers have put lots of work into making it a very nice mail system. It has no single author any more than a newspaper has one single author. Rand MH is a different story entirely. I can't tell you anything about it because I've never used it.
jromine@ics.uci.edu (John Romine) (06/13/89)
Chris, Nearly everyone in the ICS department at UCI uses UCI MH, including secretaries and students, some who presumably have no prior computing experience before being admitted. Compared, say to some vendors Operating systems, I'd say MH is pretty well supported. You have the source (for free) and can install fixes, and we do put out new releases from time to time, usually fixing some of the bugs which were reported. Also, there's a lot of documentation that comes with the package, and of course, the MH mailing lists and USENET group. Personally, I think MH is probably too complicated for "novice" users. For example, we have students who keep every message they've every received because they don't know the "rmm" command. Supporting users like these are difficult, but they probably should just be using PC's instead of UNIX anyway. As they say: "power tools are not toys". For those users who know what `backquoting` is, etc., MH seems entirely appropriate. -- John Romine (My opinions are my own.)
mesard@bbn.com (Wayne Mesard) (06/16/89)
In article <17537@paris.ics.uci.edu> John Romine <jromine@beanie.ics.uci.edu> writes: >Personally, I think MH is probably too complicated for "novice" users. >For example, we have students who keep every message they've every >received because they don't know the "rmm" command. Supporting users >like these are difficult, but they probably should just be using PC's >instead of UNIX anyway. As they say: "power tools are not toys". > >For those users who know what `backquoting` is, etc., MH seems entirely >appropriate. I must disagree with this argument. I got my department (chock full of UNIXphobes) using MH. And while raw MH (and the supplied MH "documentation") would do them in, a customized MH can be their best friend. "Support" on my part consisted of sending around a memo describing MH basics like folders and the concept not having of a single mail program along with the six or seven essential MH commands (with simple examples). Then I spent an hour or so with each user finding out what kinds of things they might want to do. Automatically keep a copy of outgoing messages? Use aliases? Have one command to delete the current message and move to the next one? Automatically inc messages on login? Search for a message by author? Subject? Etc. All of these can be accomplished by straight-forward changes to .cshrc, .login, .mh_profile, or the like. And they never have to find out about back-quote or even cmd line options for that matter. I completely agree that UNIXland is no place for non-programmers. And it's a shame that so many are getting left there one their own, because with a little support and hand-holding (i.e. hiding the power) they could have a Really Groovy Time. -- unsigned *Wayne_Mesard(); "Matthew X. Williams (Tony) This is Matthew's MESARD@BBN.COM first appearance here on Earth. His hobbies BBN, Cambridge, MA include kick-boxing and arson." -from Vassar's Commencement Musical playbill.