KERMIT MAIL FILES

The files with name MAIL are the archives of the ARPAnet KERMIT discussion
group, "Info-Kermit".  This group was started in summer 1983.  The files are
in DECSYSTEM-20 mail file format, readable with MM or MS.

The files are named MAIL.yyx, where yy is the year, and x is A, B, C, ...
For instance, the first bunch of mail from 1983 is MAIL.83A.  The current mail
file is MAIL.TXT.

DEC-20 mail format is quite simple.  All but the first line of each message
conforms to the ARPAnet mail format standard, with keywords like From:, To:,
Date:, etc, indicating the various header fields.  The headers are terminated
by a blank line, and the rest of the message is the message text.  The first
line of each message is for the benefit of the DEC-20 mail reading program.
The format of this line is

<time of receipt>,<length>;<flags>

  e.g.

12-Jan-84 19:27:49-EST,1303;000000000000

1303 is the length of the following message, exclusive of this header line.
Thus, to read a message, get the first line (this header), including the
terminating carriage-return/linefeed sequence, get the length, then get that
many characters for the message, and you are left positioned at the beginning
of the next message (if any).

One or more of the mail files may appear in Unix format.  In that case, a
mail message begins with the word "From" followed by a space (not a colon)
and extends until the next such line.  There will be no character count.

Beware:  when a TOPS-20 message has been transferred to another system,
such as Unix, the character count might be wrong (for instance, because
CRLFs have been converted to LFs).

[End of MAIL.HLP]
