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Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watnot!watmath!clyde!rutgers!mit-eddie!genrad!decvax!necntc!adelie!cdx39!jc
From: jc@cdx39.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp
Subject: Re: Uuslave lives!
Message-ID: <662@cdx39.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 13-Feb-87 12:38:52 EST
Article-I.D.: cdx39.662
Posted: Fri Feb 13 12:38:52 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 15-Feb-87 09:13:27 EST
Organization: Codex Corp, a division of Motorola; Canton, MA, USA
Lines: 22
Summary: !dial foo

> 
> People with concrete ideas for the sysop's interface to the dialer
> should post their ideas.  Ideally we could get better control of the
> login than the traditional uucp send/expect strings; anyone seen a
> better paradigm, like in a fancy terminal emulator?  

One suggestion:  include shell escapes in whatever syntax you develop.
While hacking at uucico.c a while back, I found it extremely useful 
to make it interpret send-expect phrases that looked like "!dial foo"
in the obvious way, with a non-zero exit implying failure.  That way,
it doesn't matter if your setup isn't quite perfect, because the user
can then write a standalone program that does its own magic.  This
approach is better than a subroutine capability, because you don't
need source code to invoke it.

Congrats on your work so far.

-- 
	John M Chambers			Phone: 617/364-2000x7304
Email: ...{adelie,bu-cs,harvax,inmet,mcsbos,mit-eddie,mot[bos]}!cdx39!{jc,news,root,usenet,uucp}
Smail: Codex Corporation; Mailstop C1-30; 20 Cabot Blvd; Mansfield MA 02048-1193
Clever-Saying: Uucp me out of here, Scotty; there's no AI on this node!