Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!bionet!apple!oliveb!amdahl!pacbell!pbhyf!rob
From: rob@PacBell.COM (Rob Bernardo)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.elm
Subject: Re: Does elm generate invisible screen updates?
Message-ID: <5741@pbhyf.PacBell.COM>
Date: 10 Jul 89 20:57:39 GMT
References: <5733@pbhyf.PacBell.COM> <660@kl-cs.UUCP>
Reply-To: rob@PacBell.COM (Rob Bernardo)
Organization: Pacific * Bell, San Ramon, CA
Lines: 23

In article <660@kl-cs.UUCP> jonathan@cs.keele.ac.uk (Jonathan Knight) writes:
+From article <5733@pbhyf.PacBell.COM>, by rob@PacBell.COM (Rob Bernardo):
+> In article <507@wubios.wustl.edu> david@wubios.wustl.edu (David J. Camp) writes:
+> +I am just curious, does elm spontaneously generate some invisible
+> +characters while you are waiting in the index menu?  -David-
+> 
+> Yes. The read for  user input times out every now and then so that elm
+> can run through it's main loop and test for newly arrived mail.
+
+In which case I have a bug report.  Elm 2.2 at PL10 does not report new
+mail until after the user pushes a key.  It certainly does not read
+new mail in as it arrives.  It would be real nice if it did that and
+rang a bell to let me know it had done it.  That way my window would
+flash each time new mail arrived.

The timeout on the read is 10 minutes. The function that reads the user
command returns upon *either* timeout *or* user input. In *either* case,
elm runs through this main loop and tests for new mail.
-- 
Rob Bernardo      ...![backbone]!pacbell!pbhyf!rob -or- rob@pbhyf.PacBell.COM
  Product engineer, UNIX/C Reusable Code Library        Editor, "Go `C' UNIX"
  Office: (415) 823-2417                Pacific * Bell, San Ramon, California
  Residence: (415) 827-4301                     R BAR JB, Concord, California