Xref: utzoo comp.editors:265 comp.emacs:3936 comp.mail.misc:1130
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From: lyndon@ncc.Nexus.CA (Lyndon Nerenberg)
Newsgroups: comp.editors,comp.emacs,comp.mail.misc
Subject: Re: Editor for mail
Keywords: mail editors emacs mh elm
Message-ID: <10356@ncc.Nexus.CA>
Date: 28 Jul 88 21:23:27 GMT
References: <215@fed.FRB.GOV> <5455@ecsvax.uncecs.edu> <2945@utastro.UUCP> <11657@steinmetz.ge.com>
Reply-To: lyndon@ncc.nexus.ca (Lyndon Nerenberg)
Organization: Nexus Computing Inc.
Lines: 36

In article <11657@steinmetz.ge.com> elliott@yosemite.steinmetz.ge.com () writes:
 
>While I would certainly not recommend its use for much else, the
>Michigan Terminal Systems operating system has an absolutely wonderful
>mail system called $MESSAGESYSTEM.

They don't call it $MESS for nothing...

>I have yet to find anything that
>comes close in terms of functionality and ease of learning. Things
>like "retrieve outgoing status to=fred", if you want to see if fred
>has read your mail yet,

Which is twice as verbose as saying "finger fred" to see if he's read
his mail lately.
 
>Clearly much of this doesn't work in a network environment,

Which is kind of silly when you consider most people send mail
over networks.

>lets you mail to people by name (and tells you near-matches if you
>spell a name wrong; "5 names almost matched 'Jim Elliot'. Do you mean
>'Jim Elliott'?")

Except that when there are five Jim Elliotts, you cannot display the
data on each user without backing out and starting over again to see
the second, third, fourth, and fifth user (they *might* have fixed this
by now, although it was the case at on UALTAMTS as of a few months ago).
 
$MESS wins the braindead mailer award. Have you ever looked at some
of the addresses it generates??? (Well, part of this is due to BITNET
braindamage)

-- 
VE6BBM   {alberta,pyramid,uunet}!ncc!lyndon  lyndon@Nexus.CA