Besides C-Kermit on Unix systems, the TOPS-20 command interface is used inside the mm mail client, which I've been using for decades on TOPS-20, VMS, and several flavors of Unix: http://www.math.utah.edu/pub/mm mm doesn't handle attachments, or do fancy display of HTML, and thus, cannot do anything nasty in response to incoming mail messages. I rarely need to extract an attachment, and I then save the message in a temporary file and run munpack on it. Here are some small snippets of its inline help: MM] read (messages) ? message number or range of message numbers, n:m or range of message numbers, n-m or range of message numbers, n+m (m messages beginning with n) or "." to specify the current message or "*" to specify the last message or message sequence, one of the following: after all answered before current deleted flagged from inverse keyword last longer new on previous-sequence recent seen shorter since subject text to unanswered undeleted unflagged unkeyword unseen or "," and another message sequence R] read (messages) flagged since yesterday [message(s) appear here] MM] headers (messages) since monday longer (than) 100000 [list of long messages here] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - Nelson H. F. Beebe Tel: +1 801 581 5254 - - University of Utah FAX: +1 801 581 4148 - - Department of Mathematics, 110 LCB Internet e-mail: beebe(a)math.utah.edu - - 155 S 1400 E RM 233 beebe(a)acm.org beebe(a)computer.org - - Salt Lake City, UT 84112-0090, USA URL: http://www.math.utah.edu/~beebe/ - -------------------------------------------------------------------------------