Subject: Re: What happened to my "From:"?

From: Paul O Bartlett <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 29 Oct 1996 19:32:43 -0500

On Tue, 29 Oct 1996, Thomlinson John R wrote:

> This message, I am sure, will have the text "To: comp.mail.pine" in the
> "From:" field of the index page.  [...]

    Uh, well, no, when I opened newsgroup comp.mail.pine, there was
your post sitting on top of the heap with your name in the index page. 
Please be aware that there is usually a difference in Pine between what
you, the sender, see, and we, the recipients, see.  We see your name. 
You see whom or what group you sent the message to.

    The design of Pine is that you are assumed to know your own name,
so that information is rather superfluous to you.  Whom you sent
something to you is assumed to be of more value, so that's what you
see.  On the other hand, when I open mail or news, your name is more
valuable to me, so that's what I see.  Nothing is broken.  That's just
the way it works.

Paul                             <[email-masked]>
----------------------------------------------------------
Paul O. Bartlett, P.O. Box 857, Vienna, VA 22183-0857, USA
Finger, keyserver, or WWW for PGP 2.6.2 public key 
Home Page:  URL: http://www.access.digex.net/~pobart

---

From: Thomlinson John R <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 31 Oct 1996 10:57:25 -0600

On 31 Oct 1996, Mike Brudenell wrote:

> [I'm presuming you're new to this newsgroup/mailing-list?  This is a very
> frequently asked and answered question.]
> 
> Don't worry... there is nothing wrong, and your messages are going out and
> appearing exactly right.  The "To:" prefix only affects your own Index
> screen.  This is mentioned in Pine's built-in help for the Index screen
> (type a "?" at that screen to see it) ...
> 
Hi Mike:

Thanks for the reply.  I am somewhat embarrased that the answer is
available in help - I looked at all the help I could think of
(including line-by-line in the configuration) but not in the Index
Page.  Mea culpa.

> 
> Folks, rather than keep on answering this particular question perhaps we
> could usefully have some discussion about how best to avoid it being asked
> in the dirst place?  (I remember the days when Pine-Info did this sort of
> thing, before being gatewayed to comp.mail.pine :-(
> 
> How is Pine/its documentation/help falling down here?  Is the description
> in the help not sufficiently clear (perhaps including the reason for the
> behaviour would be helpful?)?  Are people even finding the built-in help?
> 
As an occasional user of Pine, I would find a complete help file useful.
It was not immediately clear to me that the answer lay in the Index Page -
I was thinking it was something I had changed in my configuration.  The
Index Page used to show my name, rather than To: x.x.x, in earlier
versions of Pine, so when it changed I assumed it was something I had
done.  A complete version of on-line help would, I think, have avoided
this problem: a search for all occurrences of "To:" would presumably have
hit (eventually) the answer.

Finally, I apologise for asking a frequently asked and answered question.  I 
couldn't find any reference to it in the FAQ, however.

Thanks for all the help: maybe my dumb question will be the catalyst
for a whole new era in Pine documentation.

Cheers,

John

----------------------------------------------------------------------
John Thomlinson                   Institute for Tropical Ecosystem Studies
                                  University of Puerto Rico
Voice: 787/767-0371               PO Box 363682 
FAX:   787/758-0815               San Juan, PR  00936
email: [email-masked]