Is there any command which I can enter which will go through a
 conference and concatenate all responses written by a specified person into
 a file.  I wish to keep record thereby of what I have written here, as the
 sum total of that writing is more than I have ever done in a single year of
 school.
If there is a way to do this from a specified date onward only, please
 let me know that also.
        Thanks!!

16 responses total.

Let me take a stab at this in parts.

You can read *everything* from the conference (or specified item #s, if you
specify them in the usual way) into a file by something like:

read all pass >foo

(The   pass   is highly desirable so that it doesn't hang waiting for
your response to "respond or pass" prompts you never see.)

You can in the read command also specify something like   since 3/8    to
get all stuff entered beginning on the specified date.  If you use the
redirection to a file as above, put the "since" specification before the >.

I don't know of a direct way to get one user's entries.  Here's a sketch
of an indirect way:  Look at how item headings are formatted, and how
response headings are formatted.  (This is configurable, so I'm not going
into details.  Do HELP ISEP and HELP RSEP (I think) to get info on
configuring these.)  Probably these headings begin in the first column of
a line (unlike *all* the text) and have the poster's name in some standardized
position, possibly enclosed in parentheses.  After analyzing all this, you
write a script using something like awk or nawk or perl to copy all and only
those items into a file, and then do DEFINE PAGER with the invocation of
awk or nawk or perl or whatever and your script.  Then just read (again,
probably, with "pass").  This sounds like a much bigger job than it is.

See the twit-filter question in Info.  This uses some kind of program as a
filter to accomplish the opposite - filtering out everything by one or
more users.  You may find the examples instructive.  I think I had to
fiddle slightly to make them do what I wanted, myself - I didn't like
the headings I did see.  (The isep & rsep & possibly some other settings
set up a special extra heading line, which the skip program then uses to
identify what it should junk.

This sounds like a huge project for comeone who never used a unix system
prior to January 1994, and who still has but the sketchiest notion of
what they're doing with it...
        Anyone know of features already extant which would be less involved
to use?

Well, since your prose is of considerable value (to you ;->), you
can display the whole Item, and highlight those responses  you want
to keep, and Append Selection to a file on your machine. At least, you
can on a Mac with Versaterm. Would take a ittle time, but then you
could reread all of your responses, which would provide some satisfaction.

There weren't extant features a few minutes ago, but there are now.

At the "Ok:" prompt, do the following:

    source /home/remmers/public/twitseps
    define pager "/home/remmers/bin/seeonly other"

From then on, Picospan will show you only your own responses.  So
for instance, to write all your responses in a conference to a file,

    read pass all > filename

Or if you can use kermit to download, you can do

    read pass all | "kermit -s - -a mystuff.txt"

and download your stuff directly to a file named mystuff.txt on your
home machine without putting it in a file on grex first.

The seeonly pager will accept a list of users, as in

    define pager "/home/remmers/bin/seeonly kami vishnu rcurl"

which will show any and all responses by the listed users but no others.

To restore normal behavior of Picospan, exit and re-enter bbs.

(I did the seeonly program by taking Jon Zeeff's twit program and 
reversing the sense of TRUE and FALSE so that it includes just the
specified users rather than excluding them.  Extremely simple change.)

Thanks!!!!!!!

Would tha make the program, then, Jeeff Zon's ?

read since/read new since should get you the information that you want
on items.. ie.. how long since they've been responded to.

        I tried the instructions in #4, but instead of writing only responses
authored by the specified user, the program wrote *all* responses to file.
        When I ran "read all pass" without the "> filename" part, I was shown
only the selected responses.   There must be a feature in the program which
affects only that output which is directed to the screen, rather than all
output, or output specifically to file.
        John, since you made the modification, could I impose upon your
generosity to ask you to look into it?  The effort is *much* appreciated!
        --Eric

Weird.  Where the output goes shouldn't make any difference.  I'll check
it out.

Okay, I see what's going on.  When you use ">" to redirect output,
Picospan bypasses the pager entirely.  That makes sense if the pager
is something like "more" -- no need to pause between screens when
you're writing to a file -- but doesn't have the desired effect here.

The solution is to pipe Picospan's output through the "seeonly" program.
Try this:

        source /home/remmers/public/twitseps
        read pass all | "/home/remmers/bin/seeonly other > mystuff.txt"

That should take just responses by yourself and put them in the file
mystuff.txt.

OK!  I'll try it and respond with the results.  Thanks!

And, 12 days later ....... ??????

It works!   Sorry, I got so excited, that I forgot to do as I said.

I presume that twitseps is looking just at the headers. Is there a
version of this that will concatenate all responses that have some
particular keyword in them? This would be useful for gathering
everything about one topic from rather full items in conferences like
info. I use find to locate such responses, but then one has to go
through what was found manually.

There's nothing I know of that does what you want, but such a thing
is definitely feasible.  Would take a bit of programming, so if it's
me that does it, don't expect it Real Soon -- my programming time is
booked up for the moment.

I'll tell you how if you'll do it yourself from there on, OK?
8-{)>

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