response 1 of 60:

Nov 21 07:52 UTC 1994

<whine> <whine>

not I.

response 3 of 60:

Nov 21 08:31 UTC 1994

While you're changing, get pine 3.91.  It kicks the version Grex
has right on out the door.  Quite a few shortcut/speedup features
in the menus now.

response 5 of 60:

Nov 21 11:51 UTC 1994

Maybe an explanation should be put in newuser?  Or you can send
some vt100 escape codes to the screen, and ask, "Did you see a
bunch of funny [[ characters just now?"  I'd hate to set the
newusers up on a vt100 if they can't use it, and don't know how
to change it.

response 7 of 60:

Nov 21 14:03 UTC 1994

   newuser still gives the userr billions and billions of choices
when 1) most people don't really understand about them, 2) the vast
majority use something which is inherently ANSI-ish, 3) they don't
even know what a terminal type *means*.
   Newuser should have been changed long ago.  I believe john created
something called ansi-simple, or something like that for use in this
situation?

response 9 of 60:

Nov 21 14:08 UTC 1994

Incidentally, part of this question is that I'm thinking of making it
a picospan-wide switch from "mail" to "pine".  Is that OK?  Will it
confuse the heck out of people who are used to typing "mail" when they
are in Picospan?

response 11 of 60:

Nov 21 17:19 UTC 1994

My gut feeling -- without hard data to back it up -- is that we'd be
better off switching to ansi or vt100 as the default, in preference to
dumb.  Ansi might be a slightly safer default than vt100, as there are
ANSI emulations out there that don't have all the vt100 bells and
whistles.

I replaced the ansi termcap and terminfo descriptions a few months ago
with smarter versions that support text highlighting (boldface, inverse
video, underscore) and cursor keys, and tested the new descriptions
with vi, emacs, and lynx, among other things.  So the ansi description
should provide good support for just about anything anyone can do on
Grex.

Not being a pine user myself, I'll have to accept others' judgements
on whether it's a reasonable default.  People should be warned before
choosing it that you need smart terminal emulation (like, ansi or
vt100 or something comparable) to use it.  Perhaps they should be
prevented from choosing it if they choose "dumb" as their terminal
type.

Current users shouldn't have their mail program changed on them, if
that's the implication of "Picospan-wide".  If people are satisfied
with mail or elm, they should be allowed to keep them without hassle.

response 13 of 60:

Nov 21 23:48 UTC 1994

No no.  Asking new users to choose a mailer is not an option right now.
For one, the source is currently off-line where I can't get to it, so
it's easy to change defaults and text screens from the config file (which
is on-line on Grex), but it's difficult to add new questions.  For another,
my impression is that newuser already bombards the new user with an awful
lot of questions they don't understand, and adding a question about a
mailer is only going to make life tougher for new users.  I'd like to see
newuser tend toward fewer questions, not more.

The mailer question I'm asking applies strictly to what happens when
everybody, old user or new, types "mail" at a Picospan prompt. 
If it's a Bad Idea to change that, I'd be willing to see newuser silently
select a mailer for each new person, without asking.

response 15 of 60:

Nov 22 01:56 UTC 1994

Maybe a script wrapped around that checks $TERM and calls mail instead if
it's dumb?

And Valerie, this isn't going to preempt "define readmail" and "define
sendmail" settings in people's .cfonce files, is it?  If it overrides
those, I'd say it's a bad idea.  Otherwise go for it.

response 17 of 60:

Nov 23 19:23 UTC 1994

pine is at ftp.cac.washington.edu

I had problems within newer versions of pine at 7-bit even settings.
You might want to test that out pretty thoroughly.

response 19 of 60:

Nov 25 21:17 UTC 1994

When are we making the switch to 8N1?  Could make this problem go
away...

response 21 of 60:

Dec 6 09:26 UTC 1994

I looked at the newuser program tonight. It is a lot to digest
for a first session. All of it looked necessary. So I am for not
adding any more questions to the already-burdened first-time user.

I would recommend pine for people just coming into Grex. I tried
it when I first found out about it and have used it ever since.
It is quite friendly to new users.

response 23 of 60:

Dec 16 17:13 UTC 1994

I don't use pine, so I can't comment on its speed.  But the ansi termcap
on grex is a home-grown one that is more capable than the stock ansi
termcap found on most Unix systems; pine should work with it.  So I'd
suggest trying pine on grex and seeing how it goes.