Hullo Scott!
04 Apr 97, Scott Hoffman wrote to Todd Copeland:
 SH> Well, I see your point, in a vague way but it makes no sense to me.
Uhuh.
 SH> READING E-MAIL rEQUIRES without question the launching of a program.
Yes.  An email reader, believe it or not.
No email reader to my knowledge does the equivilant of copying a /text/ email
message directly into a file and then executing it automatically, or executes 
an
email in any other way.  You know why?  An email is text, not a program. Not
only is it text, it's generally 7-bit text. 
 SH> Like I said, "reading" as you are phrasing it, only exists on a piece
 SH> of paper. whenevr ASCII is run through a computerm, computer processes
 SH> are executed to display it on the screen.  In many pieces of computer
 SH> software the person isnt the only one who "reads" the messsages. Many
 SH> times software programs will also "read" the message as it is
 SH> displayed. The program looks for special commands (like in BBS
 SH> software you have "MCI codes" or on UNIX you can have a mail program
 SH> that runs "scripts".
Show me an email program that can execute another program on the drive
automatically without the user doing anything other than viewing it, or 
execute
itself in any way.  A message is /not/ normally read by anything other than a
procedure that takes the text out of a file and displays it on the screen.  
Why
would the author include a procedure to do anything else with the email 
message
when it's not needed?
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