On Mon, 7 Nov 1994 21:45:24 -0600 Douglas <[log in to unmask]> wrote: >I noticed this: > ... >> *** Forwarding note from SYLLABUS--CMSNAMES 11/07/94 13:18 *** > ... >That cmsnames host up there is one used by the Smithsonian Institution, >which my system doesn't recognize as a valid host. It's a small piece of "magic". One long-standing limitation of the IBM PROFS (Professional Office System) and OV/VM (OfficeVision/Virtual Machine) packages is their restriction on only being able to handle "eight-by-eight" addresses, e.g., [log in to unmask] Therefore, over 5 years ago, one programmer at the University of Victoria (hi, Joe!) wrote the 'PUMP' (PROFS UVic Mail Package), which allows the VM/CMS user to send/receive RFC822-formatted E-mail, e.g., [log in to unmask] For each incoming piece of E-mail from a "new" ID, PUMP can add an entry to the user's "nickname" file. When a user wishes to send E-mail to the ID associated with the 'winship' entry in the user's nickname-file, the user must specify 'CMSNAMES(winship)' in the "TO:" field. So, the 'CMSNAMES' entry is a "pseudo-BITNET-node", which indicates to PUMP that additional processing is required. PROFS or OV/VM users can send E-mail to 'UVVM(LISTSERV)' and put the command: 'GET PUMP LISTING' into the "body" of the E-mail, to get more information about PUMP.