A strange thing happened recently -- the VAX was very slow. So 
I used a couple of tools for finding out what was loading it 
down and found out that it was JUNK MAIL. 25% of KIM was being 
used to send out a message to everyone on the JUNK mail list.

When you use the normal SEND command (within the MAIL program) 
to @SYS$MAIL:JUNK, you tie up your terminal and the computer 
for quite a while. A better way to send mail to a large group 
is to first create a file that contains the text you want to 
send and then issue the following command (from the $ prompt, 
not from within MAIL):

POST filename.txt @SYS$MAIL:JUNK "Subject"

This will send the mail as a batch job on a fast computer. Your 
terminal is not tied up and you are not bogging down the slow 
computers. 

Thanks!!

John

	Last week, John Ray sent out a mass mailing about mass mailing.
The bottom line was that you could (and should) avoid interactive use of
MAIL if your usage wasn't really interactive.  He suggested:
	$ POST filename[.txt] @SYS$MAIL:JUNK "Subject"
...which will in fact work.  But it requires a change in thinking; you must
remember the order, and the quotation marks around the subject are
required, unless you have a single word, all-capital subject.  And quoting
things in commands is sometimes icky, too.

	What John didn't know (cuz I didn't tell him) is that there was an
improvement to POST.  The above still works.  But whatever you don't
supply, you will be prompted for, as with most VAX commands.  And, when you
answer a prompt, quotation marks aren't required.

	So you can say something like:
	$ POST filename		(and then a CR; filename will default to .TXT)
	To: @SYS$MAIL:JUNK	(or whatever you want, including a list)
	Subject: Anything you want to talk about, how you want it to look.
...Or, if you think this way,
	$ POST filename @SYS$MAIL:MARKETING,@SYS$MAIL:TENGEN
	Subject: Sample of mailing to more than one list at a time.
...Of course, you can do it the old way, which still works:
	$ POST filename[.txt] @SYS$MAIL:JUNK "Subject"

	As always, if it works, that's great, but if not, you're on your own.

sas