Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!wuarchive!gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!apple!mips!pmm
From: pmm@mips.COM (Paul M. Moriarty)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.elm
Subject: Re: Suggestions for next Elm release
Keywords: elm -u user, better elm/readmsg integration
Message-ID: <28095@winchester.mips.COM>
Date: 23 Sep 89 21:07:53 GMT
References: <68093@uunet.UU.NET> <27934@winchester.mips.COM> <2235@dlvax2.datlog.co.uk>
Reply-To: pmm@mips.COM (Paul M. Moriarty)
Organization: MIPS Computer Systems, Inc.
Lines: 28

In article <2235@dlvax2.datlog.co.uk> gis@datlog.co.uk ( Ian Stewartson ) writes:
>In article <27934@winchester.mips.COM> pmm@mips.COM (Paul M. Moriarty) writes:
>>In article <68093@uunet.UU.NET> asp@uunet.UU.NET (Andrew Partan) writes:
>>>How about adding a -u <user> flag to elm?  This would start up elm to
>>>read the user's mailbox (assuming permissions to do so).
>>>
>>>all of the time.  It gets to be a lot of typing.
>>
>>I second this request. I use this as well to read another mailbox
>>all day long. A -u option would really be nice.
>
>We have solved this problem by configuring the Sendmail alias Database to
>forward all messages to certain users (root, adm, lp, postmaster etc) to the
>system supervisors (there are two of us).  Isn't this a better solution than
>adding more functionality to ELM?

No it isn't. This solution would not work well at a site with many SysAdmins.
We use that mailbox as a clearinghouse for task assignment. With your
solution, I would receive many pieces of mail that were not my concern.

Both mailx and Mail have this feature and I am told (unverified) that mush 
does as well so it would appear that the designers of the other popular 
Mail User Agents thought it useful as well.

-- 
Paul M. Moriarty        pmm@mips.com          {ames,decwrl}!mips!pmm 
Computer Center SysAdmin
MIPS Computer Systems, Inc.