Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uwm.edu!psuvax1!psuvm!DERRZE1!MAINT From: MAINT@DERRZE1.BITNET (Rainer M Woitok) Newsgroups: bit.listserv.mailbook Subject: Re: Proposals for yet another version of MAIL/BOOK Message-ID: <900117.154311.CET.MAINT@DERRZE1> Date: 17 Jan 90 18:16:37 GMT Sender: MAIL/MAILBOOK subscription list Reply-To: MAIL/MAILBOOK subscription list Lines: 55 Approved: NETNEWS@PSUVM Gateway In-Reply-To: Message of Tue, 16 Jan 90 22:31:57 EST from On Tue, 16 Jan 90 22:31:57 EST Nick Gimbrone said: >On Fri, 12 Jan 90 14:06:31 CET Rainer M Woitok said: >>3. I'd like to see a SELECTD command >Why not just "select" the items then use "delete *" to get rid of them >all... Neither does HELP DISCARD or HELD DELETE mention "*" as a possible argument nor does my 89-02-0A version support it. If I issue "DISCARD *" after having selected some items, I get a message to the effect of Value "*" not allowed. > ... >>6. TIME.ZONES option >> My private TIMEZONE TABLE file contains slightly less than eighty >> entries of time zones I've encountered. Even if I omit rather >> strange ones, they clearly don't fit into a single line. Thus I'd >> prefer the TIME.ZONE option to specify a file containing the time >You could just have the macro pick up the contents of the file and put >it into a string to set the option (or have the option set via a >variable set in your macro in any of (most likely) hundreds of >ways...). No changes to the base mailbook code needed... For the sake of argument lets assume only 50 time zones (there should be approximately 24 round the globe (standard) plus the same 24 during the summer (daylight) plus some widespread synonyms like UT for GMT etc). Then you have 50 * 3 = 150 chars for the time zone abbreviation 50 * 1 = 50 blanks to separate zone name from value -1 + 50 * 1 = 49 blanks to separate value from next zone 10 * 1 = 10 digits for positive offsets < 10 4 * 2 = 8 digits for positive offsets > 9 (offset may be as big as 13) 10 * 2 = 20 digits for negative offsets < 10 4 * 3 = 12 digits for negative offsets > 9 ----- 299 characters needed for the value This number is reduced a bit because some time zone abbreviations only use two characters, but there are less than 44 two character time zone abbreviations in my file. Since GLOBALV imposes a limit of 255 characters on the value's length, SETMAIL will somehow or other choke on it or at least truncate it. So, as far as I see, there is currently no way to do that (let alone hundreds). Sincerely Rainer .----------------------------------------------------------------------. | Rainer M. Woitok | Phone : (+49 9131) 85-7811,-7031 | | Regionales Rechenzentrum | Fax : (+49 9131) 30 29 41 | | Friedrich-Alexander-Universitaet | Telex : d 629 755 tf erl | | D-8520 Erlangen | e-Mail : MAINT@DERRZE1.BITNET | | West Germany | | '----------------------------------------------------------------------'