Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!ames!amdahl!pacbell!pbhyf!rob
From: rob@pbhyf.PacBell.COM (Rob Bernardo)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.elm
Subject: Re: Feature addition idea
Message-ID: <4417@pbhyf.PacBell.COM>
Date: 19 Dec 88 20:56:28 GMT
References: <1094@raspail.UUCP> <51900010@mcdurb> <2454@ficc.uu.net> <40@dsinc.UUCP> <154@cctb.mn.org>
Reply-To: rob@pbhyf.PacBell.COM (Rob Bernardo)
Organization: Pacific * Bell, San Ramon, CA
Lines: 31

In article <40@dsinc.UUCP> syd@dsinc.UUCP (Syd Weinstein) writes:
+ Perhaps allowing it for the Guru's isnt wrong, but you still need to
+ have a way for the novices to handle things without the editor. 

In article <154@cctb.mn.org> randy@cctb.UUCP (Randy Orrison) writes:
+I think a mechanism like the 'pager' variable is a good solution.  Have
+a 'header-editor' that defaults to 'builtin' which gives the current
+menu system, but can be set to some external editor (emacs!) in which
+case elm will create a file with the headers in it and allow the user to
+edit that file.  This gives the default, simple behavior for novices,
+and still allows much more powerful capabilities for gurus.

Randy, I think you missed the overall point. "Beneath" the discussion
of how to edit the headers was a discussion of introducing a new
header "Return-Receipt-To:". It cannot be simply added to the current
ELM header editing screen because individual headers are selected for
editing by the user entering their first letter and unfortunately
"r" is already taken up by "Reply-To:". Syd's point was that while
introducing an option whereby expert users could edit the headers
in the same temp file as the body of the letter (i.e. with vi or whatever
their editor of choice is), novice users would still be restricted
to the old ELM header editing screen. The latter would need some
non-trivial user-impacting design changes to accomodate this new header
line. So we are still left with the question of how the best way to
change the operation of the ELM header editing screen whether or not
we allow expert users to edit the headers along with the message body.
-- 
Rob Bernardo, Pacific Bell UNIX/C Reusable Code Library
Email:     ...![backbone]!pacbell!pbhyf!rob   OR  rob@pbhyf.PacBell.COM
Office:    (415) 823-2417  Room 4E750A, San Ramon Valley Administrative Center
Residence: (415) 827-4301  R Bar JB, Concord, California