Subject: Re: how do I tell pine I'm not "owner"?

From: Frank Tobin <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 27 Jan 2001 10:39:38 -0600 (CST)

Scott Leibrand, at 16:49 -0800 on Fri, 26 Jan 2001, wrote:

    Come on...  You of all people should know that this is the most
    FAQ on comp.mail.pine (and maybe this mailing list, as well).
    Check out the FAQ at the UW, or read Nancy's page on the subject
    at http://www.ii.com/internet/messaging/pine/changing_from/

It's a FAQ because the Pine development team ridiculously thought it would
be useful to restrict users from being able to easily change the user-id
part of the From.  If it was possible to do this from the on-line Pine
configuration, such as you can do in the PC-Pine version, it wouldn't be a
FAQ.

-- 
Frank Tobin		http://www.uiuc.edu/~ftobin/

---

From: "Mike A. Harris" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 28 Jan 2001 00:32:33 -0500 (EST)

>configuration, such as you can do in the PC-Pine version, it wouldn't be a

I agree completely.  Also, there seems to be some assumption out
there that people have that just because someone is an engineer,
or works for some big .com company that they automatically are a
super genius knowing all about all programs in /bin, /sbin,
/usr/bin, /usr/sbin, etc.. and god forbid if they do not, and
cannot easily find an answer.

The reality of the situation is that being an expert in a
particular field or endeavor in no way makes one a know-it-all
in that field.  Nor does it mean that such a person, being so
skilled is 'Data' from Star Trek.  Everyone has areas where they
specialize, and areas where they do not give a shit to know
everything.  One can be an expert in one thing, and a newbie in
another.

Just because someone works at apple.com, or anywhere else should
not indicate that the person is an expert in solving every known
problem on their own relating to computers and technology.  These
mailing lists exist for the purpose of someone finding answers to
problems.

I agree with you 100% Frank.  A lot of software FAQ's exist
because a program does not do what users expect it to do.  An
"FAQ" is a hint to software engineers to design the software in
such a way that no FAQ is required.  This is an ideal situation
however, which is likely not 100% unachievable in reality.  This
particular issue however I feel is definitely solveable.  I
personally have helped no less than 50 people in the last couple
years to set up "From:" in PINE.  In 3.xy it meant recompiling
PINE after editing a #define in an osdep file.  Now it doesn't
require a rebuild, but it does not jump out at joe user who just
wants to type their damned email address into the program like
_every_ other MUA lets one do.

Come to think of it, does anyone have a patch available that
implements this functionality in PINE?

It would be nice to see at the very top of the Setup screen
"Your email address:"

And have it so that everything in PINE defaults to the current
behaviour so old timers and sysadmins are happy, but that joe
user can merrily type in his address.  For sysadmins that do not
WANT joe user to do this, they can set a global config option of
some kind in pine.conf or pine.conf.fixed which disables user
editing of email addresses.

Any takers?

----------------------------------------------------------------------
    Mike A. Harris  -  Linux advocate  -  Free Software advocate
          This message is copyright 2001, all rights reserved.
  Views expressed are my own, not necessarily shared by my employer.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
And the lord spake, saying, "First shalt thou write thy holy
code. Indenting shalt thou count to three, no more, no less.
Three shalt be the spaces thou shalt count, and the number of the
counting shalt be three.  Four shalt thou not count, nor count
thou two, excepting that thou then proceedeth to three. Eight is
right out.  Once the number three, being the third number be
reached, shalt thou move towards indenting thy next line ..

---

From: Nancy McGough <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 28 Jan 2001 08:01:32 +0000 (GMT)

Me too! I sent the following suggestion to the pine alpha testing
mailing list in October:

> From: Nancy McGough <[email-masked]>
> Message-ID: <Pine.WNT.4.29.99999.0010231734390.-133207@no>
> Date: Mon, 23 Oct 2000 18:07:33 +0100 (BST)
> To: Pine Pre-Release List
> Subject: The Most FAQ: Changing From
>
> Since the most frequently asked Pine question is "How do I change
> my From header?", it seems clear that something needs to be
> changed in Pine's user interface to make it easier for people to
> figure out if this is allowed on their system and, if it is, how
> to do it.
>
> My suggestion is that you add user-id to the list of variables
> that appear at the top of the Unix Pine Config screen so it looks
> like this:
>
>  personal-name    = Nancy McGough
>  user-id          = nancym
>  user-domain      = ii.com
>
>
> Or if the user-id were fixed, it would look like this:
>
>  personal-name    = Nancy McGough
>  user-id          = <VALUE is Fixed: using "nancym">
>  user-domain      = ii.com
>
>
> And then in the Help screens about user-id and user-domain, give
> links to these:
>
>  roles
>  expose-hidden-config
>  allow-changing-from
>  info about the Reply-To header
>  info about the Sender, X-Sender, and X-X-Sender headers
>  anything else that is related to changing your From header!
>
> This way Unix Pine and PC-Pine will be even more consistent than
> they already are (since PC-Pine already has the user-id variable)
> and, best of all, we will probably stop seeing so many "How do I
> change my From header?" questions in comp.mail.pine and
> pine-info!
>
> Thank you,
> Nancy
>
> PS - I still think that allow-changing-from should not be a
> hidden feature (I suggested this a long time ago).
>
>
> --
> For Pine links, see http://www.ii.com/internet/messaging/pine/
>
> Nancy McGough           http://www.ii.com           Infinite Ink
> = Sent via PINE 4.29.99999: Internet News & Email for Win/Unix =

^X,
Nancy no-one-ever-listens-to-me McGough

-- 
For Pine links, see http://www.ii.com/internet/messaging/pine/

Nancy McGough          http://www.ii.com          Infinite Ink
=- Sent via PINE 4.32.9: Internet News & Email for Win/Unix -=

---

From: Scott Leibrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 28 Jan 2001 01:09:45 -0800 (PST)

On Sun, 28 Jan 2001, Mike A. Harris wrote:

> Also, there seems to be some assumption out there that people have
> that just because someone is an engineer, or works for some big .com
> company that they automatically are a super genius knowing all about
> all programs in /bin, /sbin, /usr/bin, /usr/sbin, etc.. and god forbid
> if they do not, and cannot easily find an answer.
>
> The reality of the situation is that being an expert in a particular
> field or endeavor in no way makes one a know-it-all in that field.
> Nor does it mean that such a person, being so skilled is 'Data' from
> Star Trek.  Everyone has areas where they specialize, and areas where
> they do not give a shit to know everything.  One can be an expert in
> one thing, and a newbie in another.
>
> Just because someone works at apple.com, or anywhere else should not
> indicate that the person is an expert in solving every known problem
> on their own relating to computers and technology.  These mailing
> lists exist for the purpose of someone finding answers to problems.

My apologies to Matt for making it sound like I though he was an idiot.
Apparently that's how it came across, although that's not what I intended.
The basis for my comment was that I've seen Matt's posts on the Pine
mailing list and/or comp.mail.pine for quite a while, so I thought he
would have come across this FAQ by now.  But I agree with everything Mike
said above - that's why I contribute to pine-info and comp.mail.pine.  And
I try (but obviously don't always succeed) in doing so without insulting
anyone.

---

From: Eduardo Chappa <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 29 Jan 2001 21:38:45 -0800 (PST)

*** Mike A. Harris ([email-masked]) wrote in the pine-info...:

:) I agree with you 100% Frank.  A lot of software FAQ's exist
:) because a program does not do what users expect it to do.  An
:) "FAQ" is a hint to software engineers to design the software in
:) such a way that no FAQ is required.  This is an ideal situation
:) however, which is likely not 100% unachievable in reality.

I think one way to achieve this is by adding a "search" function in the
help section from the main menu which works like a search engine does. So
for example if one wants to know how to change the from field then you
enter "change from" (say) in the search field and pine displays features
that have to do with changing the from field (e.g. "allow-changing-from",
"customized-hdrs" etc). That would make it easier for a person to find
which feature relates to the functionality that the person is looking for.
Just to give you an example, does someone know without any research, in
which feature is the fact that pine deletes the spaces at the end of a
line documented?. Maybe this search function can be implemented in pine's
official site, and make a link from the help in the online documentation
to this site. In any case, as usual, I'm just dreaming out loud.

-- 
Eduardo
http://www.math.washington.edu/~chappa/pine/