Xref: utzoo comp.editors:260 comp.emacs:3913 comp.mail.misc:1123
Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!ukma!rutgers!mcnc!ecsvax!bch
From: bch@ecsvax.uncecs.edu (Byron C. Howes)
Newsgroups: comp.editors,comp.emacs,comp.mail.misc
Subject: Re: Editor for mail
Keywords: mail editors emacs mh elm
Message-ID: <5455@ecsvax.uncecs.edu>
Date: 25 Jul 88 15:21:05 GMT
References: <215@fed.FRB.GOV>
Reply-To: bch@ecsvax.UUCP (Byron C. Howes)
Organization: UNC Educational Computing Service
Lines: 38

In article <215@fed.FRB.GOV> m1rcd00@fed.FRB.GOV (Bob Drzyzgula) writes:
>	Here at the Federal Reserve Board, we have a number of senior and
>not so senior management type users that feel that having to learn
>a "complicated" syntax for an editor just to send and receive mail
>is an undue burden.
>	Emacs (in it's native state) and vi are considered "too complex"
>by these users, and ex and ed are of course out of the question.
>One thing I thought of was to come up with a limited set of key
>bindings for emacs based on what the function keys generate on our
>vt220 clones.
>	So I invite discussion on this. Does anyone know of a deathly
>simple, entirely intuitive, full screen editor that will work on
>vt220 terminals, and maybe do function keys and stuff, that might
>satisfy these users? Has anyone done what I described with emacs?

At UNC-ECS we have essentially the same problem.  Our site is
essentially a mail drop for a large number (600+) novice users.
Not only are the standard unix editors considered non-intuitive, too
complex or just plain "user-antagonistic" but most of our users are
not happy with the Berkeley/mailx user agent.

Having gone a number of iterations on this we have settled on a
customized emacs with an on-screen menu and bindings to vt100 or
the procomm vt100 emulation terminal.  This runs behind Dave Taylor's
elm mail handler -- judged useful because it can be made to present
a menu of the most frequently used commands to the user.

While we are in a testing phase and are still iterating to some kind
of useable mail interface for novice users, the folks we have turned
lose on this combination seem to have found it useful for their needs.

We are certainly interested in hearing how other sites have tackled
the mail/editor problem for novice users.


-- 
Byron C. Howes			  UNC Educational Computing Service
bch@ecsvax.uncecs.edu   |   bch@ecsvax.uucp   |   bch@ecsvax.bitnet