[ic] Setting up Interchange

[Andrew Lietzow]

Dear Joachim,
RE:>> I see a lot of such kind of problem report! Did you use the archivs
and
> did you search for some key words like "Please specify the Mailorderto"?
-------------
I think what Andrew Nisbet is pointing out, Joachim, is that it did not work
for HIM.
This is very important information.  We should be asking, "Why it did not
work for you?.  How did you enter your email address?  What exact
information
did you supply to the computer?" instead of balling him out because he did
not
check the archives first.

And your answer, that it did not work for LOTS of others validates his
point even more!  It's breaking and apparently it KEEPS breaking.  Is this a
known issue?  If so, are measures being taken to stop the user from entering
information incorrectly? Is it a programming issue or a documentation issue?

A program must be able to validate the user's input or possibly this is not
the correct
place to ask for the input.  If the program can't FORCE a correct input,
then I would
posit that this is not the correct place to ask the question. If the user
can break the
system, then the user is smarter about the program than the programmer?
Please... We know that is not true.  However, users CAN point out things
that we
did not think about and this becomes valuable information.  Trapped and
handled
correctly, data input should not be able to cause the system to "break".

For development, THIS Andrew's mentioning this problem once again could
be valuable information.  "Hey.  Remember that email bug guys, in the
makecat
script?   We thought we had it fixed but some guy named Andrew just made it
rear its ugly head again" and the issue cycles back through quality
control...
hopefully until it's fixed.

As I recall, it didn't work for me either (the Andrew who signed this
message) the first time around.  I've been installing systems for nearly 20
years and
I think I know what my email address is.  I'd say it's not the user this
time, but
that the instructions or possibly the program may need a tweak.  (I think I
had
to go to producst/variable.txt and fix the entry with an editor, then
restart
interchange--I could be mistaken but it seems like this worked for me).

For instance, does the system want the email address of a user on that EXACT
system, the one that it will be running on; like root, or admin, or the
interch user,
or can you enter any fully qualified email address?  Does the prompt on
the screen make this clear?  Obviously, you can't be TOTALLY braindead and
run an install script, yet if an incorrect answer here can cause the entire
system
to malfunction so that it can't even load, then this should escalate the
importance
of resolving this issue, not relagate future users to an infinite search of
the historical archives.   You DO want people to be installing more and more
IC, don't you?  You aren't expecting the users to get smarter as we go
along,
are you?  NO!  The programs have to get smarter.  That's just how it
works...

Yes, there could be an easy fix noted in the archives but possibly a better
solution would be to observe how often this happens and try to figure out
WHY it is
happening.  Perhaps a little tweak here or there and then the problem goes
away ....forever!

Mike Heins, or development: Couldn't this question be asked AFTER
the system has been set up and is running?  This would make it so that
an incorrectly entered email address doesn't trash the entire catalog
install.  Seems to me the goal is a seemless, nearly braindead,
installation not "who can stump the newbie" today.  Or am I referring to
some other product?

Andrew Lietzow, MBA
The ACL Group, Inc.
On a continuum between genius and dunce....Hope you're catching me on a good
day!