On Saturday, April 9, 1994 MCIS installed a new version of MAIL on the
OCEAN system. This version provides both bug fixes and enhancements. The
most important changes are listed below:
Bug Fixes:
1) MAIL should no longer crash in the following situations:
a) When issuing the SELECT command.
b) When the system attempts to recover space when exiting MAIL.
c) When the user presses RETURN to read the next mail message and there
are no more messages.
d) When quiting out of an editor session.
2) The SET EDITOR command in MAIL now works.
3) The DEFINE/KEY command in MAIL now works.
4) The ALIAS utility now works properly.
5) Sending MAIL messages directly from the command line should now work.
For example, the command:
$ MAIL/SUBJECT="Testing" TEST.TXT JLDOE
will send the file TEST.TXT to JLDOE as a mail message with the subject
"Testing".
6) MAIL now works from command procedures. For example, the following
commands in a command procedure would display any new mail messages:
$ MAIL
DIR/NEW
$ EXIT
7) MAIL now checks the syntax of addresses before entering the editor
rather than after. For example, the address 'testing@bad_address' will
give the user an error immediately rather than after composing the mail
message. Realize that MAIL cannot check all addresses. For example,
testing@bad_address will give an error because the system knows there
is no node called 'bad_address'. The address [log in to unmask]
will be considered valid, though, since the system can't determine the
validity of internet addresses. The address 'testing@miamiu' will also
be considered valid since MAIL doesn't know that there is no user at
MIAMIU with the userid of testing. These last errors will be caught by
the postmaster, though, and will be returned to the user.
8) Replies are now prepended with the words "You wrote:" rather than "You
write:".
Enhancements:
1) MAIL should now execute faster.
2) User's can now redefine the string that MAIL uses to prefix lines when
replying to mail messages. This string is controlled by the MAIL
qualifier /EDIT. For example, the command:
$ MAIL/EDIT=(REPLY=EXTRACT="JLD> ")
would use the string "JLD> " to prefix each line when replying to a
message. To make this your default for mail, add the following command
to your LOGIN.COM file:
$ MAIL :== "MAIL/EDIT=(REPLY=EXTRACT=""JLD> "")"
The default prefix is "> ".
3) Users may now disable the prepending of reply messages (Bug Fix #8) by
defining the logical MUEDIT_PREPEND_REPLIES to the value "NO".
4) The functions available in the ALIAS command are now also available in
MAIL. For example, the command:
EMAIL> ALIAS ADD JOHN [log in to unmask]
would define the nickname JOHN to be defined as [log in to unmask]
The ALIAS command is also still available from the $ prompt.
5) When reading multi-part messages, the system now displays a table of
contents as the first part of the message.
Known Problems:
1) The SET EXTRACT_QUOTE command does not work in our current
configuration. Use the MAIL command qualifier described as Enhancement
#2 instead. MCIS has asked Innosoft to investigate this problem.
2) As with the previous version of MAIL (and the version on MIAVX1),
user's may get errors when trying to delete messages once they have
depleted their disk quota. In this case, use the OLDMAIL command to
delete messages. MCIS has asked Innosoft to investigate this problem.
The release notes for this new version of MAIL are available in the file:
SYS$HELP:PMDF043.RELEASE_NOTES.
--
Kent Covert, Software Coordinator
Miami Computing and Information Services
Miami University, Oxford, OH
[log in to unmask] (internet)
kacovert@miavx1 (bitnet)
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