Ponics Forum

Multics' forum is like a mix between teleconferencing and a BBS. It is a very flexible system that supports many different ways of interactive, from public open bulletin boards to private project management or private short meetings.

Type "forum" to start the forum program.

"list_meetings" ("lsm" for short) will list all of the meetings. Meetings are like boards. They can be private or public. They can be restricted to certain users or projects. And they have a manager, called the chairman. When the meetings are listed, they show a short name in the far-right column.

"goto [meeting_short_name]" will put you into a meeting.

"list" will list all of the transactions in the currently-selected meeting. A transaction is like a message. A transaction can start a new topic, or respond to another message. A group of messages that are all responses to each other leading to the same root message is called a "chain".

"print [transaction #]" will print the contents of a transaction. You can also use "next" or "previous" in place of the number to select the next transaction and print it.

"reply [transaction #]" will reply to a transaction, starting or continuing a chain. Replies always use the same subject with "RE" prepended.

"talk" will start a new transaction that's not part of a chain - it will start a new topic. It will prompt for a subject and a body.

Once you've mastered these, there is a forum program that uses a menu, called "xforum".

You can also enable notifications of any changes to meetings you are a participant in by typing "fant" on the multics command line. This works similarly to how mail and message notifications work.

Transaction Specifiers

Some commands (like "print" and "reply") take a transaction specifier. Most commonly, this will be the number of the transaction. However, there are a few other options:

range - A range of transactions from the first to the second number. Ex: print 1:5

next/previous - prints the next/previous transaction from the currently selected one.

relative - Using "+" or "-" before a number will print the current transaction number plus/minus that many transactions.

nextref/previousref - This will print the next/prevoius transaction in the same chain that the current transaction is in, if applicable.

Meetings Directory

There is a "Meetings_Directory" meeting. This is a meeting where announcements to other meetings are posted so that people can find out about any meetings on the server.

Not all meetings show up by default in forum. The meetings that do show up are meetings set in the main forum directory (>site>forum_dir), or meetings in the meetings directory of your home directory (>udd>[user project]>[user name]>meetings).

You can add other meetings by using the "add_meeting" command (from within forum), and providing it the path to the meeting, or the transaction number of its announcement in the Meetings_Directory meeting.

Whenever someone creates a meeting, they have the option of automatically creating an announcement for it in the Meetings_Directory so that other people can see the meeting. This is most useful for meetings that would not display already by default (meetings not in the root forum directory).

The Forum/BBS (pt. 2) - Creating a Meeting

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