🚀 go-pugleaf

frampton@vicuna.ocunix.on.ca (Steve Frampton) writes:

>Hello:
>
>I would like to add something to Waffle that would inform a user when
>new mail has arrived.  I've got people who log in and use the system,
>and if new mail arrives for them on the other node, they don't realize
>it unless they specifically check for it (guess how many of them do).

Yes, that would be neat.  It would add some bit of overhead to each command
the user executes, and we'd need to have an external way of determining if
the new user has new mail so that external commands we add will have the
same smoothe semantics as internal commands.

I'm in the same boat.  I'm running two "node" on MS-DOS/Windows, and I have
new users that don't check their mail after every other command.  Why should
they!?  It's not something I'd do on a UNIX box, myself.

Why not think a bit further... have Waffle look to a common message area
for data marked for display to a particular comm port, and display that
text?  Kind of like the "write" command under UNIX.  Then, you could run
another shell process, immediately after running UUXQT, to a) see if there
are users online on other comm ports, and b) write to the common text area
(file).. "<com1>Note from system: new mail has arrived." ... or some such.
In addition to giving you the functionality you desire, it would also
allow us to munge together working inter-node chat utility.

Actually, I'm just thinking aloud.  As I have a source license, I'll
possibly have a go at this myself...

>It would be nice if after every command (FILES, RN, etc., heck, even
>MAIL itself) that a small program would be executed that would cheque
>the password file to see if the user has new mail, and then display
>on the terminal: "Attention:  You have unread mail waiting in your
>mailbox.  Type MAIL to attend to it." or something to that effect.  I
>believe this could be hooked into Waffle by using the "/THEN" command
>in all external programs.  I don't know if this is the best solution,
>BTW.

Mail does already check.  If new mail comes in as you're reading mail,
you see the message "New mail has arrived.."

>I am running Waffle version 1.65 under MS-DOS, BTW.
>
>Thanks in advance.
>
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>| Steve Frampton - frampton@vicuna.ocunix.on.ca | Steve Frampton     |
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