🚀 go-pugleaf

Some weeks ago I posted a query about mail user interfaces, wondering if
anyone could point me towards some useful reading. Here is a summary of
the responses that I got.

Mitchell F. Wyle (wyle@ethz.uucp) expressed interest and said that he has
a student writing rnTool for the Sun. He also pointed me towards mailtool
for the Sun (which I have examined).

Roman J. Budzianowski (roman@edu.mit.athena) suggested I look at "xmh",
an X-based front end to mh.

Robert Weir (weir@uucp.astroatc) suggested reading "Beyond the Chalkboard:
Computer Support for Collaboration and Problem Solving in Meetings", Mark
Stefik, Gregg Foster et al, CACM 30,1 Jan 1987.

Sandeep Mehta (sandeep%image@uucp.ur-laser) is working on a user interface
for a portable image processing system, using X. He provided many references
on user interfaces:

%A Joy, K.I.
%T Graphics interface tool development in a problem solving
environment
%J Visual Comput. ( Germany )
%V 2
%V 2, No. 2
%P 63-71
%I Computer Graphics
%C Tokyo
%D 1985
%K JOY85

%A de Cotret, Y.R.; Schubert, A.
%T A user interface for photographic image processing based
on a photgraphic kernel system
%J ESPRIT '84. Status Report of ongoing work
%P 355-64
%I North-Holland
%C Amsterdam, Netherlands
%D Sept. 1984
%K COT84

%A Joy, K.I.
%T A model for graphics interface tool development
%J Proceedings of Graphics Interface, 1985
%P 159-65
%I Canadian Inf. Process. Soc.,
%C Toronto, Ont., Canada
%D May 1985.
%K JOY85.2

%A Ritter, P.R.; Kraugers, A.; Travlos, A.J.
%T Design on computer software for geographic image processing
%J The 9th W.T. Pecora Remote Sensing Symposium : Spatial Info. T
Tech. for Today & Tomorrow.
%P 33-9
%I IEEE Computer Soc. Press.
%C Silver Spring, MD, USA
%D Oct. 1984
%K RIT84

%A Addington, J.D.
%T A Device & User-Interface Independent Image Processing System
%J Proceedings of the SPIE, Int. Soc. Opt. Engg.(USA)
%V 504
%P 112-15
%I SPIE
%D 1984
%K ADD84

%A Draper, S.W.; Norman, D.A.
%T Software Engineering for User Interfaces
%J IEEE Proceedings on Software Engineering
%P 214-20
%I IEEE
%D 1984
%K DRA84

%A Bass, L.J.
%T Generalized User Interface for Application Programs
%J Communications of the ACM
%V 28, No.6
%P 617-27
%I ACM
%D 1985
%K BAS85


%A Palme, J.
%T A Human-Computer interface encouraging user growth
%J Designing for Human Computer Communication
%P 139-156
%I Academic Press
%C London
%D 1983
%O edited by Sime, M.E.; Coombs, M.J.
%K PAL83

%A Hartson, H. Rex.
%T Advances in Human-Computer Interaction
%V 1
%I Ablex Publishing Corp.
%C Norwood, New Jersey.
%D 1985
%K HAR85

%A Sheil, B.
%T Power Tools for Programmers
%J Datamation
%V 29
%P 131-144
%D Feb.,1983
%K SHE83

%A Hayes, Philip J.
%T Executable Interface Definitions Using Form-Based
Interface Abstractions.
%J Advances in Human-Computer Interaction
%V 1
%P 161-189
%I Ablex Publishing Corp.
%C Norwood, New Jersey.
%D 1985

%A Wasserman, Anthony I.; Shewmake, David T.
%T The Role of Prototypes in the User Software Engineering
(USE) Methodology
%J Advances in Human-Computer Interaction
%V 1
%P 191-199
%I Ablex Publishing Corp.
%C Norwood, New Jersey.
%D 1985

%A Gettys, Jim; Newman, Ron; Della Fera, Tony;
%T Xlib - C Langauge X Interface Protocol Version 10
%I MIT Project Athena
%D Nov. 16, 1986

Thanks, Sandeep, and I'm sorry I haven't got in touch yet about the refs
you can't get. So far I haven't needed to try for any of them but I 
gave them to a colleague who's interested in them and he will probably
be searching for them.

Niels Mayer (mayer%hplabsz@com.hp.hplabs) also mentioned xmh, and
said that he'd missed the reference to an Xified elm that I talked
about in my original posting. Since this hasn't shown up on the net,
and no-one that replied to me said anything about it, I'm beginning to
think it was all a dream :-)

Dan Heller (argv%island@sun.com) told me about his "Mail Users Shell":

>I wrote a program called "Mail
User's Shell" (Mush) and think it might help you with your endeavors
in finding a good interface for unix mailers.

In contrast with ELM, which as I understand it only has one user
interface, MUSH has 3: The Sunwindows icon-based interface, the
standard curses based interface (as elm is, but not like elm's)
and a straight tty-based interface reminiscent of csh.  The line
mode has history and command line aliasing similar to csh and all
three interfaces share a great deal of commonality so users can
do the same types of commands no matter which interface they choose
to use.  Among many of the other aspects of mush, there is command
piping, sorting of messages, referencing of specific messages as if
it were a relational database and so on...

Further, mush is portable to virtually any unix system ... I've installed
it on machine from Sun's running as low as 1.1 and up to 3.3 as well
as IBM-PC's running xenix.  It also runs on old system-V version III
machines as well as the VAX and uVAX running 4.2 and 4.3.  I've seen
it run on a Pyramid running their own flavor of sys-v and even on a
Celerity RISC machine.

If you have arpanet (ftp) access, you can get the latest version of
mush on spam.istc.sri.com in ~ftp/pub/mush/mush.tar-5.6.Z (this is
a compressed tar file, so be sure to set binary mode in ftp).

Please give it a try and let me know what you think.  I'm going to
post it officially to the net once I have time (real work gets in
the way of these things :-)


					--dan

So far I haven't been able to get the program; I think I will wait till
it gets posted.

Kerry Kimbrough (Kimbrough%mcvax@dsg) gave me a reference:

	Jeffries, Robin and Rosenberg, Jarrett. "Comparing a Form-Based and a
	Language-Based User Interface for Instructing a Mail Program".
	Proceedings of CHI+GI 1987 (Toronto, April 5-9). ACM, New York, 1987,
	pp. 261-266.

Mateo Burtch (e-mail address killed off somewhere!) told me of documentation
he is writing for sun's mailtool, due out late Autumn (fall!) and suggested
I get back to him in October if I was interested.

Bill Wohler (wohler@com.sri.istc.spam) wrote:
  try the gnuemacs interface to mh.  you get the strengths of mh (and
  since it's stateless, can use mh outside of gnuemacs as well) plus the
  editing strengths of gnuemacs.  it is fast since you don't have to
  call up an editor to send a message.  although it may not look as
  fancy as sun's mailtool or dan heller's mush, i find it much more
  efficient to use.

  i've heard good things about elm as well (but they hadn't used the
  gnuemacs/mh mailer yet. ;-)

Unfortunately I don't have access to gnuemacs but this was a useful
pointer anyway.

Finally, Mark Feldman (feldman@edu.umd.umd5) expressed interest due to
work he is involved in:

>We are attempting to provide an electronic mail system for everyone on
campus, including undergrads, grads, faculty, and staff.  Currently,
everyone with an account on one of our computers has email access, but
not everyone has a computer account.  The target community is approximately
50,000 people.

Initially, our plans call for a text-based interface that can run on ordinary
semi-intelligent ASCII terminals.  It will uses curses to provide screen
control and rudimentary windows.  In the future, we would like to write an
interface to run on the various X-window workstations around campus, as
well as the Apple Macintosh.

(me again) So thanks everyone who replied to me. I also got a number of 
messages expressing interest and encouraging me in my attempt.

I'm now in the middle of developing my mailer, using the Xr toolbox and
building on top of elm. You never know, it might appear on the net someday!

Thanks again, everyone.

-- 
Paul Davison, Computing Lab., U of Newcastle upon Tyne, Tyne & Wear, UK
JANET:	pd@uk.ac.newcastle.cheviot       
ARPA: 	pd%cheviot.newcastle.ac.uk@cs.ucl.ac.uk
UUCP: 	<UK>!ukc!cheviot!pd