SEWALL@UCONNVM.BITNET (10/19/87)
Hoo boy! That message from Chris must be REALLY confusing folks on arpanet, milnet, UUCP, and everywhere but bitnet (most of the bitnet users who are causing the problem won't understand it either). Really, it's IBM's fault. Most bitnet users think an IBM program called NOTE sends mail (it does, sort of) or they've learned to type up a message and send it with SENDFILE (logical isn't it?). Both NOTE and SENDFILE send "files" (in IBM's NETDATA format). On some systems (mine for example) the program that sends what most readers of newslists would recognize as "mail" isn't even called mail (here it's called "memo"). If you all think it's going to be easy to teach all those students (and even most of the faculty) who've learned to use bitnet the difference between NOTE and MAILER, lots of luck! Methinks it would be MUCH easier to send a request to ERIC (author of LISTSERV) asking him to program LISTSERV to recognize NOTE's format. Most of us regard APPLE2-L as a list for FILES (by which we mean programs -- I know Chris meant something else by "files" but I hardly expect that to make sense to all the newlist readers who aren't on bitnet). If you are not on bitnet, not to worry. Put your programs into MAIL and send them to APPLE2-L@BROWNVM.bitnet. If you ARE on BITNET and can send messages to info-apple@brl.arpa then you know how to use mail (NOTE doesn't understand how to send messages to arpanet). Be sure and use MAIL to send to APPLE2-L!! If you ARE on BITNET and reading this from APPLE2-L (sorry about that, but sometimes messages do seem to be required on APPLE2-L for this group). DON'T USE NOTE AND DON'T USE SENDFILE!!!!!! Call your User Services people and ask how to use MAILER (also known as Yale Mail or Rice Mail). I expect the content of the message to help for about 3 days (until the next bitnet user who doesn't know NOTE isn't a MAILER discovers APPLE2-L exists and signs up). It puzzles me that LISTSERV (which was written for bitnet) doesn't deal with incoming Net Data (seems an obvious format to expect). I note that PARTICIPATE is spreading (we have a request in to install it here). What format does it send in? Don't expect its users to know if it's not mail. --------------------- ARPA: sewall%uconnvm.bitnet@wiscvm.wisc.edu Murphy A. Sewall BITNET: SEWALL@UCONNVM School of Business Admin. UUCP: ...ihnp4!psuvax1!UCONNVM.BITNET!SEWALL University of Connecticut