[ih] Reporter query on the history of greater-than in quoted replies

[craig at tereschau.net (Craig Partridge)]

Yes both Answer (now called reply) and Forward were invented in MSG,
sometime between 1974 (when Vittal got Yonke's BANANARD software) and 1976
(by which time MSG was a fully fledged MHS).  See p. 7 of the The Technical
Development of Internet Email that I wrote for IEEE Annals in 2008, and
which based on interviews with a bunch of the early developers plus combing
through various archives.

Also has a description of delivermail based on reading the source code and
talking with Eric A.

Thanks!

Craig

On Mon, Jul 23, 2018 at 3:59 PM, Dave Crocker <dhc at dcrocker.net> wrote:

> On 7/23/2018 11:49 AM, Steffen Nurpmeso wrote:
> > V5 did not have any `reply' command and "Save?"d "mailbox" message
>
>
> The first reply command (called answer in that system) was the BBN Tenex
> (on DEC-PDP-10) MSG system written by John Vittal.  I believe it was
> also the first with forward.
>
> There was no need for a quoting character until these functions started
> getting used.  Mid '70s.
>
> d/
>
> --
> Dave Crocker
> Brandenburg InternetWorking
> bbiw.net
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