response 175 of 177:

Oct 21 00:12 UTC 1996

Vanilla is mostly Steve's project and Pistachio is mostly mine.  I've had more
time lately than Steve, so Pistachio has been gaining features like the "motd"
a bit faster than Vanilla.  There is no conspiracy.

Steve's got the story right on recording read messages.  Backtalk can't tell
how far you have scrolled.  At some time I may set things up so that you can
read long items in smaller chunks, which might help the problem a bit.

response 177 of 177:

Oct 22 21:52 UTC 1996

The motd is definitely something I'd like to put in to Vanilla, and also
  I want to split up really long items. Mostly I want to redo vanilla to
 use forms and graphics better. This would not be a complete rewrite,
but  it is a big job, and I need to be able to make more time for it. 
Recently I have had little time at all. Jan's depiction in resp:175 is 
generous.