Moving from a Symbolics to an Explorer.

[barmar@Think.COM (Barry Margolin)]

    Date: Tue, 14 Aug 90 10:29 PDT
    From: RDP@ALAN.kahuna.decnet.lockheed.com (Robert D. Pfeiffer)

    On the question "Will Zmail mail files be readable?":

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	Date: Fri, 10 Aug 90 18:15 EDT
	From: Brad Miller <miller@SOL.CS.ROCHESTER.EDU>

1        not really, but sort of. You can more-or-less read in babyl files, though
        some stuff has to be removed first if you use them, like keywords.
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	Date: Fri, 10 Aug 90 15:53 EDT
	From: barmar@Think.COM (Barry Margolin)

	They both should be able to read and write Babyl and ITS format mail
	files.  Kbin files probably can't be read by the Explorer.
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    These two answers differ somewhat.  Does anyone have other items (like
    keywords, or character styles) which should be stripped before
    attempting to move between systems?  More importantly, would there be
    any problems using Zmacs on the microExplorer to fix up "by hand"
    anything that I might miss?  And, BTW, are files with an extension of
    .XMAIL the same as .BABYL and, if not, how does one coerce one into
    the other?

Look at the file with an editor.  If each message is preceded by two
headers separated by a line containing something like "***EOOH***" then
it's a Babyl file.

I'd be surprised if keywords confuse the Explorer.  It might ignore
them, but I don't think it should complain about them.

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	Date: Fri, 10 Aug 90 13:12 PDT
	From: snicoud@atc.boeing.com (Stephen L. Nicoud)

	Poor debugger support on TI. Local variables in a frame are only accessible by
	calling some strange function (EH-LOC, etc).
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    This surprises me as I thought that this functionality existed at MIT.
    Do others find the debugger poor?

The ability to type expressions that are evaluated in the lexical
context of the frame was added by Symbolics, probably when they
implemented Common Lisp.  Prior to that you had to use functions such as
DBG:ARG and DBG:LOC.

	7) Multiple file versions weren't supported about a year ago.  I don't know if
	they are now.

    This also surprises me and seems like it may cause me all kinds of
    problems.  Anyone know if this is still the case?

This probably refers to saving files in the Macintosh file system.  I
don't think Symbolics does multiple versions in the Mac file system on a
MacIvory, either.

                                                barmar