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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!hou3c!MRC@SU-SCORE.ARPA
From: MRC@SU-SCORE.ARPA (Mark Crispin)
Newsgroups: net.mail.headers
Subject: Re: "blaming Unix SendMail"
Message-ID: <477@hou3c.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 25-Apr-84 00:16:33 EST
Article-I.D.: hou3c.477
Posted: Wed Apr 25 00:16:33 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 19-Apr-84 03:51:28 EST
References: <474@hou3c.UUCP> <140@down.UUCP> <1871@rlgvax.UUCP>
Sender: ka@hou3c.UUCP (Kenneth Almquist)
Lines: 14
To: Header-People@MIT-MC.ARPA
In-Reply-To: Message from "allegra!hou3c!burl!ulysses!harpo!seismo!rlgvax!guy at mit-vax" of Wed 18 Apr 84 19:26:46-PST
Postal-Address: 725 Mariposa Ave. #103; Mountain View, CA 94041
Phone: (415) 497-1407 (Stanford); (415) 968-1052 (residence)

Perfectly fair.  It doesn't matter whether one refers to syntax or
semantics of the configuration files.  The fact is that it is very
hard to respect a mailsystem which engages in idiotic behavior because
the case of one of single-letter options in the configuration file was
lower case instead of upper.  This has happened repeatedly in systems
across the ARPANET, and in-house at Stanford a number of times.

The developers and users of Unix and its software loudly proclaim how
advanced their software is and how it is the "clean non-kludgy" way
into the future (compared with systems such as DEC-20's which are
presumably "unclean and kludgy").  It seems quite fair to call SendMail
on this sort of thing.  If Unix wants to be more than a toy system it
has got to recognize that ergonomics is part of software engineering.
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