From: CSBVAX::MRGATE!@KL.SRI.Com:COLE@CC.UTAH.EDU@SMTP 14-OCT-1987 18:36 To: EVERHART Subj: VAXNOTES Alternatives... Received: from CC.UTAH.EDU by KL.SRI.COM with TCP; Wed 14 Oct 87 13:23:30-PDT Date: Wed, 14 Oct 87 13:40 MST From: "Allen Cole, Postmaster" Subject: VAXNOTES Alternatives... To: info-vax@KL.SRI.COM X-VMS-To: in%"info-vax@kl.sri.com" Posting-Version: BYU News 0.9 (VAX VMS) Subject: re: VAXNOTES Alternatives... > Does anyone know of any alternatives to VAXNOTES for VAX-based BBS-type > operations? Commercial or not, pointers to information on products of this > type would be greatly appreciated. > > Thanks in advance, > Joel Garrett Since this is of interest to the net in general, I will post it instead of sending mail. We are using a program called BYUNEWS. It is a program that does USENET style news groups. In fact, we get a USENET news feed from a local Unix machine over Ethernet. It could just as easily be done over BITNET (and is being done), or DECNET. INFO-VAX isn't mailed to my machine, but a copy is sent to a newsgroup called comp.os.vms. The program has the capability for "local" newsgroups. We also have used Mark London's BULLETIN program that was advertised on INFO-VAX, and Geoff Huston's NEWS program (gih9000@anu.oz). One of the key features of the BYUNEWS program is that newsgroups don't get turned into mail messages. This way I have 20 mail messages and 200 news group postings that come in each day, but I only see mail messages when I start up mail. The news system takes standard news batches from a Unix machine, or from the VM/CMS port of news. It also takes any text file in the "incomming" directory to be a news item to be posted. It then uses a fortran program from an automatically scheduled batch job to unpack the news items into the appropriate files. The news is read with a TPU based news reading program. Each user has a file in their login directory that keeps track of what groups they read, and which messages they have currently read. This program doesn't have all of the functionality of the Unix "rn" program, but has a very easy to use, screen oriented user interface. I haven't used vn, but the approach seems to be similar. There is a screen of news goups and you can scroll to the one you want to read. Then you get a screen of article subjects to pick from. It also has the functions I used in Unix "rn": search for a subject, space bar to see more message, "n" for the next message, "b" to go back to the previous article, something to save a message, something to mail a message to somebody, and "m" to mark the group as read. It also has a facility for posting. What happens when the post command is used is specified by the news manager. The choices are to put the article in the local news file (local posting), or prepare a USENET style batch file. Then each news groups has its own DCL command that is used to call a mail program such as PMDF or GMAIL. One feature that I particularly like is the "download" command. This points to a DCL procedure which by default start up Kermit. It can be used to download a particular article, todays articles (as one file), or all articles (as one file) in a group. As soon as our FTP to a MAC is working (we need to get rid of a Hayes interbridge), I will replace the call to kermit with a call to FTP. The program came right up. The only hard part was negotiating a news feed, and writing the shell script to deliver the news. Once I got the right person to do it though, it only took a few minutes. I have posting to moderated groups set up, but I haven't set up posting of the news batches yet. It doesn't look like it will be hard, but my queue is rather full right now. We are a beta test site for the program, but don't have a financial interest in the program. The cost is $200. They are currently shipping version 0.9 which is fully functionaly. For ordering information, contact: Jim Logan LOGANJ@BYUVAX.BITNET Brigham Young University Computing Facilities We have been very pleased with the program. Allen Cole University of Utah Computer Center Internet: cole@cc.utah.edu Bitnet: cole@utahcca.bitnet