rroot@edm.UUCP (Stephen Samuel) (07/30/88)
From article <10356@ncc.Nexus.CA>, by lyndon@ncc.Nexus.CA (Lyndon Nerenberg): > In article <11657@steinmetz.ge.com> elliott@yosemite.steinmetz.ge.com () writes: > >>While I would certainly not recommend its use for much else, the >>Michigan Terminal Systems operating system has an absolutely wonderful >>mail system called $MESSAGESYSTEM. > They don't call it $MESS for nothing... When they first installed the hooks for the system, (the system's NOTHING like UNIX -- it runs on 370/ style machines), they had a little stub that gave an error message without checking parameters -- so, if you said: $MESS UP MY WORLD it came back: Command not implemenented yet. But: at the risk of starting a mail war: I would like to defend the MTS MESSagesystem (at the user level). I, personally, find it very nice to use. If you tend to deal with people on the system (~6000 accounts -- It's the prime system in use on campus), it's a godsend. As pointed out, you can modify mail after you send it, check it's status (as opposed to whether the user has signed on: It also differentiates between delivered (the recipient has seen the header) and seen (actually read), as well as WHO read it. and when). It also has automatic histories for message replies (If I can't figure out what Mark meant in his one-line message: "I thought dave was handling that", I just go: dis hist=2 to get the two previous messages in the sequence (no need to quote in stuff just for context, even if the message was sent last month). This even works for messages that I wasn't originally a party to: ("reply to 'somebody else'"). You can also forward stuff to one central account, but still retrieve stuff by which account (or name) it was aimed at: RETrieve NEW TO 'bonaventure mailbox' It also serves as a reminder service: Send to me holduntil=thurs expire=2days text='Tape startrek!' (if I don't read it by Friday night, it disappears). >>lets you mail to people by name (and tells you near-matches if you >>spell a name wrong; "5 names almost matched 'Jim Elliot'. Do you mean >>'Jim Elliott'?") > > Except that when there are five Jim Elliotts, you cannot display the > data on each user without backing out and starting over again to see > the second, third, fourth, and fifth user (they *might* have fixed this > by now, although it was the case at on UALTAMTS as of a few months ago). no, it's not fixed yet, although you can use *userdirectory and go: display each name='mike' (which will probably get you 6 pages of data, given the number of mikes on the system). One friend of mine, though likes to do things like 'find kirk' and seeing what the misspelled-name-matcher comes up with... > (In this case:) wo find kirk 5 names matched "kirk". Do you mean Wayne Kirk? ?n Do you mean JAMES T. KIRK? Do you mean Gary Karl Kirk? Do you mean CAPTAIN JAMES T. KIRK? Do you mean CAPT'N JAMES T. KIRK? 6 names almost matched "kirk". Type "CANCEL" to cancel search. Do you mean Kris Chau? Do you mean Kris Ng? Do you mean Bob Korkie? Do you mean Stainless Steel Rat (Kruz)? Do you mean John F. Krowka? Do you mean Peter Kershaw? ?n No names were selected. (I had to reply 'n' to each query). You can also get out of a search with a BREAK or end-of-file. Since multiple names are allowed to be registered under one ID, you can end with people registering things like: Do you mean you typed in the wrong name??? Of course, if you want to avoid the name processer altogether, you can: send to user=gora (all IDs on MTS are 3 alphanumerics.. They used to assume 4 letter names were user IDs until people complained about things like 'send to mike' being quietly sent to the wrong person'. > $MESS wins the braindead mailer award. Have you ever looked at some > of the addresses it generates??? (Well, part of this is due to BITNET > braindamage) $MESS did used to truely mess up replies to external bitnet sites, but most of that has been fixed now (since about April) with new network support. If you REALLY want to hear about braindamage, you should have heard some of the horror stories I got from a friend who uses PROFS (IBM's answer to electronic mail) -- Of course, she didn't consider them to be horror stories, just problems.... She's only ever used IBM. (govt). -- ------------- Stephen Samuel {ihnp4,ubc-vision,vax135}!alberta!edm!steve or userzxcv@uofamts.bitnet