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From: robert@jimi.cs.unlv.EDU.UUCP
Newsgroups: mod.computers.vax
Subject: VMS Mail
Message-ID: <8703250644.AA20671@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: Wed, 25-Mar-87 02:16:13 EST
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Posted: Wed Mar 25 02:16:13 1987
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>I am a heavy user of VMSmail, and a modest user of All-in-One
>mail.  I am of the opinion that, while All-in-One provides
>some nifty things like multiple classes of delivery, its filing
>system is no better than the one in VMSmail, and a lot more
>work to use.

Well, I am the one who called vms mail braindamaged - perhaps I
should be a bit more specific.  I don't know anything about all-in-one
execpt that the headers look obnoxious, what I use is the Rand MH system,
which I beleive someone was porting to vms, I was hoping someone would
have some info on this....

Here are some things mh does, in which I feel VMS Mail is dificient.

MH comes with many utilities, such as "burst" which allow me to expand
digests into individual messages (or combine many messages into one)

MH and MMDF (or MH and sendmail) work well together, so that I can have
mailing lists get automatically refiled into their own folders, so I
can look at them at my leisure.  In fact I can do this based on the To
Cc:, From:, and Subject fields, or have all messages processed by one
or more utilities.  Note that I don't have to invoke any commands to do
this, it happens when the mail is delivered.

With mh, I don't have to see obnoxious mail headers such as Received-From,
Resent, X-VMS-To, etc, etc, etc.  The only headers I see are From To, Cc,
Date, and Subject.

If I send mail to a machine that is currently down (for backups perhaps)
the mail will be queued, also I don't have to wait wail mail makes a
connection, it will simply take care of things, and mail me a message
informing me of any problems.

With mh, If I go on vacation, I can have mh automatically mail each person
who sends me mail (but only once) a form letter telling them I am
gone, and when I will respond.

It is very easy for me to write a utility (as a normal user) that will get
to process each message, or classes of messages (as per .maildelivery in mmdf)

I think aliases are handled in a better fashion from within mh.  MH is
certainly ore flexible.
Some of these things are taken care of from PMDF, certainly all of them *could*
be implimented, however they are all problems with "vanilla" vms mail.

If we are still voting, I don't care one way or the other about digests.  I
don't think anyone really wants anybody to suffer, just to join the real world.

				--robert

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