Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!clyde.concordia.ca!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!ists!eric
From: eric@ists.ists.ca (Eric M. Carroll)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.elm
Subject: Re: A basic Wish List
Message-ID: <5644@ists.ists.ca>
Date: 1 Mar 90 19:55:15 GMT
References: <1066@philmtl.philips.ca>
Reply-To: eric@ists.ists.ca (Eric M. Carroll)
Organization: Institute for Space and Terrestrial Science
Lines: 31

>6)  Mail header generation and editing during mailing and replying.
>
>    There is no doubt in my mind that the best way to handle this is as in
>    Rnmail, where the headers are treated as part of the message and you can
>    freely edit them.

Well, there is alot of doubt in mine. I am a charter member of the Larry Wall 
Appreciation Society(TM), but IMHO Rnmail is definately not Larry's best piece
of work. My Elm users are novices, and want to dispatch mail, not worry and 
fiddle with confusing, bizzare and arcane lines that mean nothing and can
blow the whole process by accidently touching them. If you must have it, make
it a elmrc option so I can turn the damn thing off.

>    I often have to copy the To address out of the body of the message.
>    Using elm, I have to work with a paper and pencil to remember what to
>    edit into the headers.  Why add a whole new section to the user interface
>    (the header input and editing), when the users is already using a
>    perfectly good editor of his choice.

I cannot recall a single instance of needing this. You must have some 
seriously warped transport agents along the way. Transport agents should
not, ever, ever ever ever touch the header, except to add tracing information. 
No. Not. Negative. Get it right the first time and leave it alone.

The reason I want a seperate "header" section is that it seperates the
tasks of dealing with headers and dealing with MAIL. Users care about CONTENT
not PROCESS. They give not one whit about HOW it happened, just that it did.
Leave header handling alone, please. 

(By the way, Elm is a standard mail user agent within ISTS for novice users.
Lotta people using it...)