GMSGS, GMSGS-server, SYSMSG, FORUM, MSGS, SMDATE, et al.

[Ian Macky <Ian @ MIT-OZ>]

GMSGS has been redone a bit.  It now takes just about all the options
that the ITS version does, including re/MAILing the messages, specifying
an arbitrary output file, and so on.  For full gory details, read the
help file available by @HELP GMSGS or in HLP:GMSGS.HLP

For LispM users:  The same GMSGS is running as a server.  You can have
the messages dumped in your MAIL.TXT (or ZMAIL.TXT if /ZMAIL specified)
by a simple transaction;  just send as arguments to the RFC the username
of the person whose messages you want (and another options), and you'll
get back an ANS with some string like "[There are messages]", or a CLS
with an approriate error string.



There have been a few changes made in these programs:

SYSMSG, FORUM, and MSGS are all instances of the same program; you'll
notice that they prompt you with "--Msgs--" and "--More--" instead of
"[Msgs]" and "[More]", and will accept <space> for a positive answer.

SYSMSG reads the mail to System, but can be told to check others
by specifying their names as keywords or switches, e.g.

@SYSMSG /FORUM or @SYSMSG FORUM

Likewise, FORUM can read system messages by

@FORUM /SYSMSG or @FORUM SYSMSG

To read all of the known BBoards, as @MSGS does, you can specify ALL
or /ALL.  The difference between @MSGS and @SYSMSG /ALL is that @MSGS
will type out the name of the BBoard before the first --Msgs-- prompt
in each BBoard.

/NOISY will give you messages like "[No Forum messages]" and such, if
you like to know that it's actually doing something.


@SMDATE takes the same set of keywords as SYSMSG and friends.  By
default, it sets the last-read date for System messages, but you can
have it do other BBoards by specifying their names (in which case it
will do only those ones), or ALL for all of them.  Also, you can give
it a DATE&TIME, just a DATE (time defaults to one second after
midnight), or just a TIME (date defaults to today), or "-nn" which
says to set the read dats to nn days ago.  If no date or time is
specified, it defaults to *now*.  For example,

@SMDATE /FORUM -7

Sets the last-read date for the FORUM BBoard to 7 days ago;

@SMDATE 1-Jan-83 ALL

@SMDATE 12:0:0

etc.