Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!mcvax!enea!ttds!draken!psv
From: psv@nada.kth.se (Peter Svanberg)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.mh
Subject: MH drawbacks for computer-unexperienced users
Message-ID: <336@draken.nada.kth.se>
Date: 21 Apr 88 04:40:57 GMT
Reply-To: psv@nada.kth.se (Peter Svanberg)
Organization: The Royal Inst. of Techn., Stockholm
Lines: 49
Keywords: novice unexperienced

I'm writing a user manual for email to be used by anyone who
have access to a computer terminal - i. e. some have very little
experience of computer use.

When documenting different mail systems (TOPS-MM, VMS-MAIL, UNIX-mail
and UNIX-MH) I realized that MH have some beginner drawbacks:

    * They are puzzled about the fact that all commands should be
      given from the shell. Solution: msh!? Oh no, we tried it but it
      seems to be poorly tested and not intended for use more than
      once. So, we wrote an own simpler MH-shell program.

    * The way you read new mail is strange: you must first do "inc",
      then "show" for the first letter, and "next" for the rest of
      the letters. Its easy to loose track of which letter you should
      read next, if you read an old letter amongst the new ones. Yes,
      there is an "unseen" feature but then you must read ALL unseen
      letters in a row. The other systems are easier (you just press
      return for the next letter).

      Solution: We made our shell run "inc" when started, and invented
      an own command "unseen" which runs "show" on the first letter in
      the sequence "unseen".

    * There is no way to include a file in a letter without the use of
      an editor. All the other systems have explicit commands to use
      a certain file as a draft or to insert a file.

      The closest I could get was "comp -file filename", but besides
      that this switch isn't parsed correctly (in MH 6.5; the filename
      is treated as if it was a message list), the file must be a
      "draft message", i. e. contain header lines, or else the
      prompter program doesn't like it. Then you must copy the file
      you want to include to a new file, and edit it to put the header
      lines (and an empty line) in. Not easy-to-use!

      The best, I think, would be to add an "insert" command to the
      whatnow program.

Have I missed some feature that could solve some of the above
problems? Send me a email and tell! (I'll sum up later.)

Are there plans to solve these problems? Have you experienced other
problems with MH and computer beginners? Post a comment to the net!
---
psv@nada.kth.se			(should work!)		Peter Svanberg
psv%nada.kth.se@uunet.uu.net	(for lazy nodes...)	Dept of Num An & CS
							Royal Institute of Tech
							Stockholm, SWEDEN