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Date: Mon, 15 Aug 1994 15:07:06 -0700 (PDT)
From: Lawrence Gales <larryg@cac.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: new msgs routine
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On Mon, 15 Aug 1994, Eliot Lim wrote:

> >   The "m" option doesn't work on mead2, saul2 or stein1.  (Didn't test 
> > carson.)
> 
> sorry, it was incorrectly documented.. it was implemented as "s", but
> i'll go ahead and make "m" do the same thing..
> 
>  
> > More importantly, since almost no one will find that sub-command, I'm 
> > very disappointed to see a useful part of the old msgs command is lost: 
>  
> >   msgs nnn
>  
> > I think this should be brought back!  The output of uwmsgs -h is not much
> > good if you can't select a message to view. 
> 
> i didn't think anybody was going to use this!  who could possibly remember
> what msg # is in regards to what?  anyway, it would be a trivial thing
> to do so i'll stick it in.  all i am going to implement is a "more NNN"
> which is what the old one is supposed to do but didn't quite do it very
> well.
> 
> 
> eliot
> 
===================================
Actually, I would find the "nnn" option very useful: you 1st print out a 
list of all current messages uwing the 
"-h" option, and then print number of the one you want.  However, I think 
that the format of the "-h" display could be improved:

  use 1 line/msg with the date, time and header line, e.g.,

 Msg No.  Date/Time                 Message
 -------- ------------------------  -----------------------------------
 No. 237  Thu Jul 21 13:17:02 1994  testing from stein1
 No. 242  Wed Jul 27 11:01:24 1994  junk mail
 No. 245  Wed Jul 27 15:11:00 1994  another test from osf
 No. 247  Mon Aug  8 11:15:23 1994  test2 permissions
 ...

We gets lots of requests for "how to read the news about..." when it has 
flashed by their screen and they have a hard time finding out how to 
re-read it.  I consider this to be a significant issue and I think that
a good user interface is important, since msgs is a majot link to our users.

===================================
 Larry Gales, C&C Consultant
larryg@cac.washington.edu
543-4956
===================================


.