Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uflorida!novavax!twwells!bill From: bill@twwells.com (T. William Wells) Newsgroups: news.newusers.questions Subject: Re: Several questions Message-ID: <1989Sep17.222953.14160@twwells.com> Date: 17 Sep 89 22:29:53 GMT References: <3665@blake.acs.washington.edu> Organization: None, Ft. Lauderdale, FL Lines: 52 First, try being a bit more informative with the Subject line. Something like: "Several questions about mail and rn" would have been better. In article <3665@blake.acs.washington.edu> wiml@blake.acs.washington.edu (William Lewis) writes: : 1. Is there a way to get mail from Usenet (or Internet or whatever this is : I'm using) to Compuserve? I seem to recall seeing somewhere a : description of a gateway, but at the time I had no need of it. There is. Someone else will have to tell you how, since I don't know the details. : 3. Is there a way to make `mail' think I've read an article, when I : actually haven't? I want it to go to mbox when I exit, but I don't : want to have to wait for it to scroll slowly past at 1200bps ... Which `mail'? Questions like this should always be accompanied by a description of your system. This should be at least the hardware type, operating system name, and OS version, along with anything else that might be relevant to getting the answer. My `mail' has the `mbox' command (abbreviate `mb'). : 4. What is the format of the .forward file, and how does it work? Will : it do anything under normal `mail'? I've looked in the manual under : `forward', `.forward', `dotforward', etc. but have found nothing. A : correct manual reference would be great. The .forward file is just a mail address. On some systems you can give more than one mail address; I'm not sure whether you use commas or spaces as a delimiter. : 5. What is the format of a mailbox file (or how do I find out). I want : to be able to browse, modify, etc. a standard mailbox file, from within : programs I write. Depends on the system. Mine looks like this: From Message headers blank line Message body blank line In the message body, any line beginning with `From ' has an `>' placed in front of it. As for the description of the message headers, for that there is a standard (RFC822, I think), but there is no telling if your system follows it. --- Bill { uunet | novavax | ankh | sunvice } !twwells!bill bill@twwells.com