[1] From: Willard McCarty <mccarty@phoenix.princeton.edu> (24)
Subject: Three editorial matters
GARBLED MESSAGES?
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In a note to me, Harry Gaylord noted that "message 9.358 arrived totally
corrupted. The 8th bit is turned on so that it is jibberish. Did that happen
to others?" I'm very interested in hearing from anyone who has experienced
the same or similar problems with messages from Humanist. I have checked the
copies of 9.358 available to me and found the odd strangeness where one
would expect accented characters, but otherwise the message was
intelligible. If anyone understands what is or might be happening, I'd
welcome an explanation.
A REQUEST
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Some Humanists have more than one account, and for obvious reasons of
convenience use whichever happens to be at hand when writing to this
seminar. Unfortunately, the software that runs Humanist cannot tell that,
say, mccarty@cs.oberlin.edu (not in the list of subscribers) is the same
person as mccarty@epas.utoronto.ca (which is). To continue my example, if
the former mccarty sends a message to Humanist, this message will be
forwarded to me as editor with a note telling me that this mccarty is not
a subscriber. If, as always happens, I want to publish this note, then I
have to edit it by hand to remove the error message. I certainly do not
mind a bit of editing now and again, but because the tools I have for the
purpose are so primitive that the job gets annoying very quickly.
Thus my request: PLEASE! ALWAYS SEND MESSAGES TO HUMANIST FROM THE
ACCOUNT YOU USED WHEN YOU SUBSCRIBED. If you cannot remember which
account this was, see the next item.
NEW HELP PAGE
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Thanks to Asst. Editor Chris Fox the help page for Humanist has been
significantly augmented so that members should be able quite easily to
figure out how to send commands to the ListProcessor software. Another
source of vexation for us here in the backroom (where the sound of the
printing presses is deafening) are the polite notes from various members
requesting that someone please do this or that, e.g. turn off the mail
for a time, or change the address to which messages are sent. Obliging as
we are, we hasten to suggest that it's much better for everyone if the
person making the request do the work for him- or herself. Besides the
joy of knowing that you can control the software by yourself is truly
great.
However, I think it is true that not everyone has access to the Web, even
via lynx. Would it help if the help page were mailed out? placed on an
anonymous-ftp server? Suggestions, please.
WM