MRL%PFCVAX@ZERMATT (03/19/86)
A new version of the "PFC" BULLETIN is now available. Unlike the recently announced version on INFO-VAX, this one is written in FORTRAN (and MACRO) rather than C. This new version has several new features, the main one being finally adding the capability of creating bulletin libraries (henceforth known as folders). Following is a description of the utility. (New features and changes are preceeded by an asterik). ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Description of BULLETIN utility: The BULLETIN utility is a utility to display bulletins to users when logging in. Users are notified of bulletins only once. They're not forced into reading them every time they log in. Submitting and reading bulletins is easy to do via a utility similar to the VMS MAIL utility. Privileged users can create bulletins which are displayed in full. (known as SYSTEM bulletins). Non-privileged users can create non-SYSTEM bulletins, but only topics are displayed at login. *Folders can be created so that bulletins pertaining to a single topic can be placed together. Folders can be made private so that only users who are given access can read the folder. When new non-system bulletins are displayed, an optional feature will asking if the user wishes the bulletins displayed. The user can then read the bulletins (*with the ability to write any of the bulletins to a file). A user can disable the notification and prompting of new bulletins feature on a folder per folder basis. However, the exception is bulletins submitted to the default GENERAL folder. Users are always notified at login of new bulletins in this folder, but can disable the prompting. This is to give non-privileged users some ability to force a notification of an important message. Bulletins have expiration dates and times, and are deleted automatically. *Expiration dates and times can be specified in absolute or delta notation. Privileged users can specify "SHUTDOWN" bulletins, i.e. bulletins that get deleted after a system shutdown has occurred. "PERMANENT" bulletins can also be created which never expire. Privileged users can broadcast their bulletin (*to either all users or or all terminals). *A user can select, on a folder per folder basis, to have a message broadcast to their terminal immediately notifying them when a new bulletin has been added. *An optional "Bulletin Board" feature allows bulletins to be created by users of other systems connected via networks. A username can be assigned to a folder, and any mail sent to that user is converted to bulletins and stored in that folder. This feature originally was designed to duplicate the bulletin board feature that exists on some Arpanet sites. However, with the addition of folders, another possible use is to assign an Arpanet mailing list to a folder. For example, one could have an INFOVAX folder associated with an INFOVAX username, and have INFO-VAX mail sent to INFOVAX. Users could then read the mailing list in that folder, rather than having INFO-VAX sent to each user. There is a feature which allows adding GENERAL non-system and system bulletins to other DECNET nodes from within the BULLETIN the utility (see the ADD command). All information about the message, such as expiration date, are transferred to the host, thus making it more flexible than the BBOARD method of adding bulletins. Bulletins can be either sent to a file or *sent to a print queue. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Our VAX is not directly on the ArpaNet, so if you desire the sources, send me your request and I will send the sources via mail. There are some command procedures for installation included. However, they are pretty crude, as I have not had time to write something more sophisticated. (P.s. If you already have an old version of the bulletin utility, you should create the version in a different directory, as the command procedure is not smart enough to delete obsolete files.) Mark R. London MRL%PFCVAX@ZERMATT