ANSWER(1L)ANSWER(1L)NAMEanswer - phone message transcription system
SYNOPSISanswer [ -pu ]
DESCRIPTION
Answer is a part of the Elm mail system and is designed for secretaries
and the like to allow them to answer phones and|or listen to phone mes‐
sage machines and quickly and easily transcribe the messages into elec‐
tronic mail.
The program will use standard mail addresses or aliases included in the
standard .elm directory alias files. It can also use its own alias set
(usually a subset of the system aliases, with more fields per user
(i.e. unique first names, unique last names, first-initial last name,
and so on)). Note that if you want to use this capability, it means
that you must create this alias set and then install it, using
newalias, as a separate alias table for the account this program is to
be run from.
Options are:
-p Prompt for phone slip type message fields.
-u Allow names that are not in the alias table. Without this
option all names must be resolvable as aliases and answer
will reprompt for a new name if the alias cannot be resolved.
Interface-wise, the program is a breeze to use - type 'answer' to start
it up and then merely type a user name at the
Message to:
prompt, fill in the requested information (simply type an "x" next to
the pertinent information - "TELEPHONED", "PLEASE CALL", "URGENT", etc.
if the -p option was given), and then enter a message, if any, ending
with a blank line. If you elect to use the special alias file, names
can be entered as 'Firstname Lastname' and the system will try to find
a mail alias based on the first letter of the first name plus the last
name. For example, 'Dave Taylor' will cause the program to search for
an alias 'd_taylor' in the file (note the transliteration into lower
case). The program will loop until killed or quit.
Answer can be easily exited by typing any of 'quit', 'exit' 'done', or
'bye' at the 'Message to:' prompt.
AUTHOR
Elm Development Group
SEE ALSO
The Elm Alias System Users Guide
newalias(1L), checkalias(1L), mail(1), mailx(1), frm(1L), printmail(1L)FILES
$HOME/.elm/aliases.text individual alias source
$HOME/.elm/aliases.dir individual alias dbz directory table
$HOME/.elm/aliases.pag individual alias dbz hash table
$HOME/.elm/aliases individual alias data table
/tmp/snd.$$ edit buffer for outgoing mail
BUG REPORTS TO
Bill Pemberton flash@virginia.edu
COPYRIGHTS
Copyright 1988-1995 by The USENET Community Trust
Derived from Elm 2.0, Copyright 1986, 1987 by Dave Taylor
USENET Community Trust Elm Version 2.5 ANSWER(1L)