Xref: utzoo comp.editors:249 comp.emacs:3850 comp.mail.misc:1109 Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!fed!m1rcd00 From: m1rcd00@fed.FRB.GOV (Bob Drzyzgula) Newsgroups: comp.editors,comp.emacs,comp.mail.misc Subject: Editor for mail Keywords: mail editors emacs mh elm Message-ID: <215@fed.FRB.GOV> Date: 15 Jul 88 13:35:46 GMT Organization: Federal Reserve Board, Washington, DC Lines: 34 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. The ideal situation would be if they could use our word processor as the editor, but that would be WordMarc, and WordMarc is just too weird about file names and temporary files and command syntax and other stuff to be either very functional or very user-proof in this application. We have been using MH as our primary user-mail interface, and they don't like that either -- no pretty blue windows with cute menus popping up (these people see all that glitzy stuff that IBM PCs do and get all jealous) :-). I can deal with the menu problem with a front end on MH, or by maybe using elm once that stabilizes. But the editor problem is harder. The last thing I need is a project to write a new editor. I keep thinking that the Rand editor e would be the answer, but then I worry about the user that all of a sudden wants to send something with tabs in it (I don't know, a Makefile or something). 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. Of course this would mean that I would finally be forced to learn emacs, but life is sometimes hard :-) 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? -- Bob Drzyzgula Federal Reserve Board, Washington, DC, 20551; uunet!fed!rcd