Subject: PINE

From: justin wells <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 4 Mar 1995 23:32:03 -0500

I don't use PINE, but already I don't like it.  Some e-mail I sent to a PINE
user was just inadvertantly posted, by them, to a newsgroup because PINE is 
apparently stupid enough to assume its users want to post e-mail messages 
to newsgroups when the original was a reply to a newsgroup message.

You should change the name to PINEE, "Pine is not even elm"

Justin

---

From: [email-masked] (Frank Yao)
Date: Sun, 5 Mar 1995 07:20:11 GMT

>to newsgroups when the original was a reply to a newsgroup message.

It's not pine that's stupid, but your friend.  Pine is used as both a
mail and newsreader.  When it sees a newsgroup line, it will PROMPT
the user, and ask if they want to post the article.  Obviously, your
friend replied, 'y'.

- frank

-- 
**********************************************************************
*  You may be right.  I may be crazy.  But it just may be a lunatic  *
*  you're looking for. 			- Billy Joel 		     *
*************************** Frank Yao, [email-masked] ******

---

From: [email-masked] (justin wells)
Date: Sun, 5 Mar 1995 08:43:19 GMT

In article <[email-masked]>,

>justin wells <[email-masked]> wrote:

  [PINE is]

>the user, and ask if they want to post the article.  Obviously, your

Bzzt.  You lose.  PINE is supposed to be a system that naive users can
use, and this is exactly the kind of error a naive user is going to make.
Any system that fails to meet the expected needs of its expected users
is a failure.  PINE was probably designed by programmers -- a fatal 
mistake in a system that is meant to be used by non-programmers.

Naive users are exactly that: people who don't have in-depth knowledge
of the systems they're using -- that's not stupidity, that's people who
have spent their lives doing other things, probably intelligently.

What is stupid is the "the user is an idiot" response that programmers
spew every time their systems fail to meet human needs.

Justin
-- 
<html><title>.signature</title><h1>   Enhanced 911 Services   </h1><hr><ul><li>
  <a href="mailto:[email-masked]"> Send me email. </a><li>
  <a href="http://www.undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca/~rjwells/911.html"> WWW page.
  </a></ul><em>    "One Policy. One System. Universal Service."    </em></html>

---

From: [email-masked] (Edwin Kremer)
Date: 5 Mar 1995 12:12:23 GMT

In <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (justin wells) writes:

   | I don't use PINE, but already I don't like it. [...]
   | apparently stupid enough to assume its users want to post e-mail messages 
   | to newsgroups when the original was a reply to a newsgroup message.

Bashing at some piece of software you never used yourself is just too
easy. If you have a serious comment on its functionality, you can bring
up suggestions here and get a useful discussion out of it.

Anyway, I'll try to answer, based on experience working with Pine. Given
this specific case, Pine will ask you if you really want to post a followup
to the newsgroup, second it will ask if it should reply to all recipients
or just to the sender. IMHO these questions leave very little space for
making the wrong decision.

Actually, I found it very hard to do anything wrong by mistake using Pine.
You mentioned Elm: I've been using Elm for years with great pleasure, but
I've printed out numerous messages when I wanted to move up the the p)revious
message :-) Development of Elm has kind of come to a halt, that's one of the
reasons I moved to Pine. Another is that my users kept asking for it; I can
mention a few more reasons, but there's no intent here to start a religious
war over email user agents.

						--[ Edwin ]--
--
Edwin H. Kremer, systems- and network administrator.   <[email-masked]>
Dept. of Computer Science,  Utrecht University, The Netherlands   [WHOIS: ehk3]
----------------------- http://www.cs.ruu.nl/~edwin ---------------------------

---

From: Dan Bikel <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 5 Mar 1995 17:14:22 -0500 (EST)

What is more user-friendly than a program ASKING the user what it should
do?  I agree that if pine failed to ask whether a user wanted a newsgroup
reply posted, it would have failed in its user-friendliness. As it is,
however, the program asked the appropriate question, and if the user was
indeed DUMB ENOUGH not to choose Ctrl-G (Get context-sensitive help) when
faced with a question he or she did not understand, then there is NO
defense a program can take. 

Are you saying there should be two queries, the first asking what to do, 
and the second asking "are you SURE"?  A user could enter "yes" both 
times--this is not the solution.  Even in the best-designed program, a 
user can screw him/herself up (just as in everything).

I've been using pine for two years, and I think it is an incredibly
well-designed program, getting better and more flexible with each new
revision. 

--dB.

---

From: [email-masked] (Frank Yao)
Date: Sun, 5 Mar 1995 21:17:30 GMT

>mistake in a system that is meant to be used by non-programmers.

Justin, the message/question that pine asks is clear enough.  It runs
something to the line of "Do you want to post to the newsgroup?".  I'm
not sure what the default answer is, but if the user doesn't take the
time to read the prompt and just type away, how can you blame the
program.  It's not that the prompt was ambigious.

>have spent their lives doing other things, probably intelligently.

In-depth knowledge?  You don't need in-depth knowledge to read a line
off the bottom of the screen.  It's in the same place that elm would
ask whether or not you wish to purge the messages marked delete, etc.

>spew every time their systems fail to meet human needs.

In this case, it seems justified.  If the user cannot take the time to
read the prompt before hitting <return> or entering their reply, who
are we to blame?  If you have "alias rm 'rm -i -r'" and do a rm * in
your home directory, not read the confirmation message, and just 'y',
are we to blame 'rm'?

- frank

---

From: [email-masked] (justin wells)
Date: Sun, 5 Mar 1995 23:51:16 GMT

>up suggestions here and get a useful discussion out of it.

Well -- this problem has been a topic of discussion in comp.risks and 
alt.current-events.net-abuse, so I'll take that as pseudo-empirical 
evidence that PINE is failing a large number of its users, sometimes 
in ways that seriously compromise their privacy.

Worse -- it compromises the privacy of people like me, who don't use it.

>You mentioned Elm: I've been using Elm for years with great pleasure, but

.. I won't defend Elm.  I use it, but I'm rather a technical sort of person
and Elm meets my needs.  I think the problem with PINE is it is intended for
use by naive users, but makes some assumptions that are contrary to the 
nature of the audience (many naive users don't understand the difference
between e-mail and news, for example; or understand the implications of 
the word "post"). 

You can call naive users "stupid", but it won't save your product:  If you
expect your users to be stupid, your product is a failure unless it 
compensates for stupidity.

---

From: [email-masked] (justin wells)
Date: Sun, 5 Mar 1995 23:56:46 GMT

In article <[email-masked]>,
Frank Yao <[email-masked]> wrote:

>Justin, the message/question that pine asks is clear enough. [...]

>off the bottom of the screen.  [...]

Why do people insist on asserting that software is logical and makes 
sense and is therefore OK, even though it is obviously failing its 
intended audience?  

The problem with naive users inadvertently posting private messages to
public newsgroups is so widespread that it has been discussed several
times in comp.risks and alt.current-events.net-abuse -- it's a clear
failure, and no amount of rationalizing will save it.

>...It's in the same place that elm would...

Elm wasn't designed to be used by naive users.  Well, not the same way
PINE was.  Elm work fine for me not because it doesn't suffer from the 
same problems as PINE, but because I'm one of the technical users the
designers of elm were imagining when they created it (or rather, enough
like the designers that the software they designed with no audience 
analysis works for me.)

>your home directory, not read the confirmation message, and just 'y',

The software is *always* to blame.  Really, there's no such thing as 
"human error" -- that's a crock made up by system designers so that they
don't have to fix their software to make it usable.

Justin

---

From: [email-masked] (Alan J Flavell)
Date: Mon, 6 Mar 1995 19:45:23 GMT

In article <[email-masked]>
Nancy McGough <[email-masked]> writes:
 
>Someone on the Pine team posted quite a while ago that a future release
>of Pine will make it more clear to the user what the 3 options are
>(post only, mail only, post & mail) and have the default be mail only.
>In the meantime my recommendation to people who use trn, tin, nn or
>any other newsreader that includes a Newsgroups header in mailed-only
>messages is to include a note that says something like "This is a
>private email message. Please do not post it."
 
Since, as you say, the problem is that the respondent does not
understand what the various options mean, I don't see how this is
going to help.
 
This problem needs fixing, urgently, by technical means.
Appealing to (I'm sorry) clueless newbies to behave properly
is not even a temporary solution, I'm afraid.
 
You may find this difficult to believe, but some people who have
been using email successfully for years have no idea what Usenet
is, and would not understand the meaning of the word "post" in
this sense at all.

---

From: Nancy McGough <[email-masked]>
Date: 6 Mar 1995 09:19:51 -0801

>to newsgroups when the original was a reply to a newsgroup message.

This issue has been discussed to death on comp.mail.pine and
comp.mail.headers so I'll try to keep this short.  I agree with Justin
that Pine's interface and behaviour is wrong in this case.   But I also
understand where the Pine team is coming from.  The Newsgroups header
in a news article is well defined - it means this article was posted
to the specified newsgroup(s), but in a mail msg the Newsgroups header
is not well defined (I don't think it's discussed in RFC 822).  Since
Pine is both a mailer and a newsreader they interpret headers to mean
the union of the meanings of headers for mail (RFC 822) and news (RFC
1036).  So, Pine interprets a Newsgroups header as meaning that the
msg was posted and then Pine asks the user if she wants to post, mail,
or post and mail her response.  Problems arise because many
newsreaders, including the ubiquitous trn, tin, and nn, put a
Newsgroups header in msgs that were mailed only.  Now, this is not
necessarily wrong on the part of trn, tin, and nn since they are adding
an undefined header to mail messages, but in retrospect it would have
been better if these newsreaders had used a different header, maybe
something like "X-Originated-In-Newsgroups".  So, technically Pine is
behaving reasonably but IN PRACTICE Pine's behaviour is not reasonable.
Someone on the Pine team posted quite a while ago that a future release
of Pine will make it more clear to the user what the 3 options are
(post only, mail only, post & mail) and have the default be mail only.
In the meantime my recommendation to people who use trn, tin, nn or
any other newsreader that includes a Newsgroups header in mailed-only
messages is to include a note that says something like "This is a
private email message. Please do not post it."

Hope this is helpful,
Nancy

-- 
 /\_/\  Nancy McGough              /\_/\  Vote for the humanities.misc  @..@
( o.o ) Infinite Ink              ( o.o ) newsgroup! See my Web pages  (----)
 > ~ <  http://www.jazzie.com/ii/  > ^ <  for details.                ( >__< )

---

From: Ed Greshko <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 7 Mar 1995 06:37:05 -0800 (GMT)

> is, and would not understand the meaning of the word "post" in

	As was stated in various replies, the next release will attempt
to correct the preceived problem.

	Just curious, do you think a newbie or an unelightened email
user would understand:

"Your message is being posted for thousands to read, do your want this?"

					Ed

Edward M. Greshko                       Technical Manager, Electronic Commerce
                                        Control Data Asia/Pacific Region
Voice: +886-2-715-2222 x287             6/F, 131 Nanking East Road, Section 3
FAX  : +886-2-712-9197                  Taipei, Taiwan R.O.C

---

From: [email-masked] (Greg Berigan)
Date: 7 Mar 1995 05:19:22 GMT

>private email message. Please do not post it."

Or to delete the Newsgroups: header prior to mailing the response.  That
would be the only foolproof method, right?

Indeed, I might just make that patch to my already customized tin.
Remove inclusion of the Newsgroups: header, but include the References:
header.  That and get it to stop automatically including Followup-To:
headers that have the same contents of the Newsgroups: header.  And...
well, I'm rambling now.

-- 
----'     [email-masked] (Greg Berigan)
------,
    ,-|-, "Some say he's the devil himself."  "I heard he was            _
----' '-'  a giant chicken!" -- Highlander Boo: The Chickening          d b CC

---

From: [email-masked] (March Hare)
Date: Mon, 06 Mar 1995 13:12:47 -0500

Once upon a time, justin wells ([email-masked]) in <[email-masked]> was overhead by the Queen of Hearts:
: Bzzt.  You lose.  PINE is supposed to be a system that naive users can
: use, and this is exactly the kind of error a naive user is going to make.
: Any system that fails to meet the expected needs of its expected users
: is a failure.  PINE was probably designed by programmers -- a fatal 
: mistake in a system that is meant to be used by non-programmers.

Well, I could at least see your point up until that last one.  If
programmers aren't supposed to design it, then who is?  What is it
that you think programmers do, anyhow?  I'm not going to say that all
aspects of PINE are just peachy-keen, but I know a lot of non-programmers
that use it all of the time.  Your argument, therefore, falls very
very flat.

John
--
Mome Raths BBS            sevot yhtils eht dna ,gillirb sawT`      ^. .^
(513)523-7887                 ebaw eht ni elbmig dna eryg diD      ( @ )
Oxford, Ohio                    ,sevogorob eht erew ysmim llA
                                 .ebargtuo shtar emom eht dnA

---

From: Adam J Weitzman <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 7 Mar 1995 08:38:05 -0500 (EST)

On Mon, 6 Mar 1995, March Hare wrote:

> : PINE was probably designed by programmers -- a fatal 
> programmers aren't supposed to design it, then who is?

Design people maybe?

I'm a programmer, and honestly, I couldn't distinguish a good UI from a
bad one to save my life. I know what *I* like, but what I like and what
works for everybody are, more often than not, two somewhat different
things. The best programs are the ones that combine both. I think Pine
does a very admirable job in this respect (its handling of the Newsgroups
header notwithstanding), because I like it, *and* the non-technical people
here like it. 

I think one way to "fix" the Newsgroups problem is to allow disabling of
the news-posting capability altogether when I compile the program. (Is
this already possible?) That would at least cut down on its size *and*
circumvent this confusion entirely. Force the user to use a different
package to post news. That's what I would like to do when/if I install
Pine 3.91 here for general consumption. 

I disagree with Justin's point, but I can see very clearly where it comes 
from.

                                        - Adam J Weitzman
                                          Individual, Inc.
                                          [email-masked]
"Music, music, everywhere, but not a drop to drink." - Little Annie

---

From: Vince Vielhaber <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 7 Mar 1995 09:57:07 -0500 (EST)

> "Music, music, everywhere, but not a drop to drink." - Little Annie

I wouldn't want to see it as a compile time option, but could see it
disabled as a default, and one would have to enable it thru setup.  But
in the interim, I liked someone else's suggestion of post, mail, both or
however it was actually worded.

Vince.

---

From: Nancy McGough <[email-masked]>
Date: 12 Mar 1995 15:42:35 -0800

>would be the only foolproof method, right?

Yes, in nn you can do this by putting this line in your init file:

  set mailer mynewsmailer

And create a script called mynewsmailer that contains this:

  formail -R Newsgroups: Originated-In-Newsgroups: | /usr/lib/sendmail -t

---

From: "Amy L. Lauderdale" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 13 Mar 1995 06:33:51 -0600

> apart the "Folder Index" and "Folder List" functions). The reason might
> bee the load of too much new vocabulary in a new situation. I think the
> same might apply to an english-speaking net newbie.

I can understand that non-English speaking people might have trouble
with directions in English, but that would be true with any program,
not just pine.

Pine is SIMPLE to use.  I had absolutely no trouble with it as a 
newbie and have trained CHILDREN and adults with absolutely no
problems.  All questions are very simple to understand.  

> 
> After yesterday I don't wonder too much for somebody not knowing 
> what "Do you want to post to the newsgroup?" means.

I can't imagine someone being dumb enough to say "yes" to doing
something if they didn't know what it was.  I can understand them
hitting y by accident or by habit.  However, there is that second
chance with the warning about thousands of readers.  Sheesh, anyone
can understand that.

Personally, I wish all of you who hate pine would just get off this
group.  No one is convincing anyone else.  This newsgroup used to
be a friendly, helpful group until this stupid thread started.
This morning I had 19 messages and 12 were from this thread.  

Now that I have aired my frustration with it, I intend to delete
without reading any further posts about this topic.  I hope
it dies quickly.

a NEWBIE who LOVES pine as it is....

***************************************************
Amy Lauderdale, Math Teacher
Lafayette High School/Northwest Community College
Oxford, Mississippi
[email-masked]
***************************************************

---

From: [email-masked] (John Stanley)
Date: 13 Mar 1995 08:47:37 GMT

In article <[email-masked]>,
Ed Greshko <[email-masked]> wrote:

As I recall, when you setup Pine for mail and news reading, there are
two separate areas where you define folders. You define MAIL folders
(or where to find them), and NEWS folders and where to find them. So,
Pine should be able to tell whether what it is looking at is mail or
news. It certainly COULD look for a Path: header -- which would be a
clear giveaway that the user was looking at news, the absence of which
would clearly mark that which was not.

>"Your message is being posted for thousands to read, do your want this?"

Why should Pine EVER ask a user about posting a reply to what it knows is
mail?

---

From: Mike Brudenell <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 14 Mar 1995 12:27:54 +0000 (GMT)

It is true that "folder collections" and "news collections" are defined 
separately.  It is also true that the former are read/write (can be read 
or have messages saved to folders in them), whilst the latter is read-only.

Note that the operative words are "folder collection", *not* "mail 
collection".

It is quite possible to save any item (e-mail message or News article) to
a folder in a folder collection.  Indeed this is a very valuable way of 
keeping important or interesting News articles so that they do not 
disappear when the News server expires and deleted them.

Whilst it would therefore presumably be possible to interpret the 
presence of an item in a news-collection folder as "this article is News" 
it is *not* possible to interpret the presence of an item in a 
folder-collection folder as meaning it MUST be an e-mail message.  It is 
quite possible to be a News article that was saved there.

I would  be worried by the prospect of separating folders into two 
"types": mail (only) and news (only).  I find Pine's integrated approach 
very useful, and many of our users are happily using Usenet News who 
would, I believe, otherwise have got to grips with it.

In view of all the hoo-hah about private e-mail/posting to News I have 
taken the step of modifying (mending?) our (supplied but not supported by 
us) Tin newsreader so that it does not include the "Newsgroups:" header 
line when mailing an article.

I realise this only affects people receiving articles mailed _from_ our 
Tin, but would expect on the whole to cover most situations.  (I suspect 
most of our users find an interesting article and then e-mail it to a 
friend here.)

If more people took the time to make such changes to their newsreaders 
rather than spouting off here perhaps the problem could gradually be 
eliminated? (Rattles cage and prepares to stand back pronto! ;-)

Mike Brudenell                                               <[email-masked]>
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Computing Service, University of York, Heslington, York, YO1 5DD, UK
Phone: +44-(0)1904-433811  FAX: +44-(0)1904-432767

---

From: Jean Charest <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 14 Mar 1995 07:46:54 -0500 (EST)

> problems.  All questions are very simple to understand.  

I had a real newbie type the letters "Spc" to get to next page. 
Understanable given that most other commands are invoked using the 
letters highligthed.

> without reading any further posts about this topic.  I hope

There is obvioulsy no easy and correct solution to this thread. May I 
suggest that those interested in continuing it, do so directly. This list 
serv is intended to help those of us with REAL problems.

.----------------------------------------------------.
| Jean Charest                                       |
| Atmospheric Environment Service                    |
| Environment Canada                                 |
| Internet:  [email-masked]                  |
| Dots:      CHARESTJ@A1@AESTOR                      |
'----------------------------------------------------`

---

From: [email-masked] (Lea Viljanen)
Date: 10 Mar 1995 10:56:18 -0000

>program.  It's not that the prompt was ambigious.

Yeah, right. I spent yesterday morning teaching Pine to some beginner
Unix users. I thought Pine would be a suitable program for them because
it shows a lot of help on screen and asks for confirmation before users
can do anything stupid.

But it seems that I was partly wrong. My experiences yesterday seem to
indicate that Pine might not be the best e-mail program for those whose
native language is something else than English. Some of my pupils, who
actually speak and read English, the Pine menus and prompts were just
too much to comprehend (for example, a few had problems telling 
apart the "Folder Index" and "Folder List" functions). The reason might
bee the load of too much new vocabulary in a new situation. I think the
same might apply to an english-speaking net newbie.

-- 
Lea 'LadyBug' Viljanen        University of Helsinki      Lea doesn't
[email-masked]      Computing Centre            rhyme with tea.

---

From: [email-masked] (John Stanley)
Date: 20 Mar 1995 10:08:37 GMT

In article <[email-masked]>,
>disappear when the News server expires and deleted them.

Of course it is.  No debate here.

>quite possible to be a News article that was saved there.

If Pine saves a news article in a folder and does not put the flag that
says "this was news" in it, then why doesn't it?

However, the assumption that "it isn't news unless you know it is" would
not prevent private replies, and it would prevent the posting of mail by
accident. The latter is the goal.

>would, I believe, otherwise have got to grips with it.

Once again, the point is not that some people find the complete
integration nice. The point is that some people DO NOT. In any case,
using trn is hardly much more daunting than trying to figure out how to
tell pine about newsgroups. In fact, I just looked for the way to set up
news in 3.89, and I still don't know how to set up news for a local
spool, or what I would do if I didn't know the name of my local NNTP
server.

>eliminated? (Rattles cage and prepares to stand back pronto! ;-)

The majority of people who use newsreaders that put Newsgroups: headers
in mail do not read this group. Trying to make those who object to the
blanket statement that mail and news are the same responsible for
changing all the sites that do things wrong is going to work about as
well as making all those who say it is the same responsible.

---

From: Nancy McGough <[email-masked]>
Date: 21 Mar 1995 14:31:23 GMT

>says "this was news" in it, then why doesn't it?

Right now Pine does not have a flag for messages saved in folders that
says "this was news".  I'm curious about a few things:

 * Which newsreaders allow you to save news articles into mail
   folders?  I know nn and pine do but what about tin and trn?  
   And what about all the Windows/Mac readers?

 * Of these newsreaders, which have a way to distinguish whether 
   a message came via news or mail?

I think, as I said many months ago, that we need a new header (or
headers) for these things.  As we all know from this endless
discussion, the Newsgroups header is not going to work for this
purpose because it's too entrenched in the system in newsreaders
that include it in mail-only messages.  How about having a header,
maybe called something like Type or Transport that can take one or
more of these values:

Value     Meaning
=====     =======
M         mail (but not mailing list)
N         news
L         mailing list

So, for example, if a message were posted and mailed it would have
this header:

Type: MN

And if a message were sent to a mailing list and Cc'd to users it
would have this:

Type: ML

etc., etc.

Then mail processors, news processors, folder managers, etc. could
be developed to intelligently deal  with all the different
combinations.

  -Nancy

--
 /\_/\                      @..@     Vote for the humanities.misc  /\_/\
( o.o )  Nancy McGough     (----)    newsgroup! The CFV is at     ( o.o )
 > ^ <   Infinite Ink     ( >__< )   http://www.jazzie.com/ii/     > ~ <

---

From: [email-masked] (Russell Schulz)
Date: Thu, 23 Mar 1995 08:38:49 -0700

> Type: MN

Transport: Mail,News

> Type: ML

Transport: Mail,Mailing-List
-- 
Russell Schulz  [email-masked]  ersys!rschulz  Shad 86c

---

From: [email-masked] (Matt Messina)
Date: 24 Mar 1995 03:46:45 GMT

>And if a message were sent to a mailing list and Cc'd to users it

Good idea.  But how can you differentiate between a private mail address
and a mailing list address?  If I wanted to receive my private mail at
[email-masked], I could.

Do you want to have to answer "Is this message being sent to a mailing
list?" every time you send a message?
-- 
Matt Messina
[email-masked]

---

From: [email-masked] (John Stanley)
Date: 22 Mar 1995 22:41:38 GMT

In article <[email-masked]>,
>   And what about all the Windows/Mac readers?

[T]rn both allow users to save articles in folders in mailbox format.

>   a message came via news or mail?

Both rn and trn do. When they save an article in mailbox format, they
retain ALL news headers, and create one of their own called Article:.
E.g., "Article: 21134 of comp.mail.misc"

Which checking this, I noticed that the From_ header that trn creates
is WRONG. It is missing a space before the date. 

>So, for example, if a message were posted and mailed it would have

The only place that could know for sure that something was posted AND
mailed is the source. The source cannot know positively that something
was not posted. Assuming that it was not would be an error on the safe
side.

But this leaves us back at the destination being the one creating the
flag. (The source can only tell us what it thinks will happen; the
destination can tell us how the article actually arrived.) And, since
trn already creates this flag, maybe others should follow suit.