Problems with Janet and Bitnet

[Herb Chong]

In article <1062 at umd5.UUCP> zben at umd5.UUCP (Ben Cranston) writes:
>The bovine feces concern the password stuff.
>There is probably a password built into the binary for the Columbia mailer,
>which is an object-only distribution.  The Columbia mailer is written in
>IBM assembler code, so you can see how much fun it is trying to support a
>non-IBM-370 machine on BitNet, and why non-IBM-370 machines are sometimes
>made to feel second-class citizens.  Oh well.

this not quite true.  on VM, most of the Columbia mailer is in REXX, an
interpreted command language which does many of the things that people
use shell scripts for.  there are parts written in assembler but there
are enough operating system services that REXX does fine the way it
is.

>If you've read this far, you might wonder how to get from BITNET to the
>ARPA gateway.  I don't know for sure, because I don't know if WISCVM does
>the 'rightmost percent sign' stuff for multiple gateways.  One might 
>write an address like:
>
>      yf21%u.gec-mrc.co.uk%ucl-cs.arpa at wiscvm
>          ^               ^
>and one would want wiscvm to interpret the RIGHTMOST percent sign of the
>two.  I think this is the right thing to do, and all MY mail software does
>this.  If you support a mailer that does percent sign, consider implementing
>this subtle point.

wiscvm does do this.  i regularly gateway my mail to the UK via
WISCVM/CSNET-RELAY/UCL.AC.UK.  the path (for whatever reason) seems to
work better than sending to ucl-cs.ARPA as suggested above.

Herb Chong, IBM Research...

I'm still user-friendly -- I don't byte, I nybble....

VNET,BITNET,NETNORTH,EARN: HERBIE AT YKTVMH
UUCP:  {allegra|cbosgd|cmcl2|decvax|ihnp4|seismo}!philabs!polaris!herbie
CSNET: herbie%ibm.com at csnet-relay
ARPA:  herbie at ibm.com, herbie%yktvmh.bitnet at wiscvm.wisc.edu
========================================================================
DISCLAIMER:  what you just read was produced by pouring lukewarm
tea for 42 seconds onto 9 people chained to 6 Ouiji boards.