Intro

INTERACT was the highly tailorable language of EIES, that could capture and modify and input/putput function from the EIES system. It was a command interpreter (serving a similar purpose to the scripts of today), though had added features that made it a full-fledged programming language. Every INTERACT command entered took the form of +COMMAND. The programming staff of EIES defined system wide commands, and users could define their own commands as well.

Since there were numerous commands programmed into the system, some inappropriate for discussion here, this page will only detail some of the more interesting commands and their usage, as well as the general functionality of defining an INTERACT command.

• Typical Interact commands acted as shortcuts. For example, a +CNC in EIES (if you were already in a conference and at a CONFERENCE CHOICE? prompt) was equivalent to 4,**,Y. Similarly, if you were outside of a conference and entered +CNC 55, that action would be equivalent to doing ++2,55,N,(N),4,**,Y. It's not important to know what those answers mean, only that each section separated by a comma is an answer to a question asked by EIES, and that +CNC and variances are shortcuts to those methods.
• Some Interact commands were more for "fun" than functionality. If a user was frustrated at EIES and entered +[swearword] (The actual command was + followed by the real swearword, which is not repeatable on this site), the system would execute a +@;+CALC"ALL OF US WATCHING ARE ASHAMED OF YOU, @(NAM).";-- , which printed the preceding statement with the user's name, and logged the user off of the system. It's humorous if you picture an even like that happening to a user at a terminal. A +TERRIBL (The reason for the truncation of the word is that INTERACT commands were stuck to a length of 7 characters due to limitations of FORTRAN) would execute +calc"Very sorry to hear that. Take two aspirin.", +rem;. The varied commands were amusing for both the programming stff and users, and also demonstrated the capabilities of active text in EIES on occasion.
• As mentioned in the above point, an interesting feature of INTERACT was to execute active content within communications. The ability to execute general programs from within EIES communiques was useful, albeit dangerous. Users could create programs that overrode the stamped name with a variable that returns the current user logged on. It would seem to anyone viewing the message that they had sent the scandalous message. Turoff used this as an object lesson for new users to understand the potential and danger of the capabilities of EIES.
• INTERACT also included a complete database functionality within the system. The basic command was +Let ndx(1, "This a a Key") = "Value";. A similar alternative was +l ndx(1, (2,3,4)) = (2,3,"Test");. The first arguement was actually the file number from +open 1,"file".
• Murray Turoff informed us of a command known as +doit, which exemplified the tailorability of EIES. Simply enough, it allowed a user to define the menu structure to appear as they wished. A default INITIAL CHOICE? menu appeared as:
  ACCESS TO:
      MESSAGES (1)
      CONFERENCES (2)
      NOTEBOOKS (3)
      BULLETINS (4)
      DIRECTORY (5)
      EXPLANATIONS (6)
      REVIEWS (7)
      COMPOSITION (8)
      MONITORING (9)
  INITIAL CHOICE?
  
  +doit gave the user the ability to redefine these areas, so a user could change that to:
  ACCESS TO:
      Mail (1)
      Threads (2)
      Journals (3)
  ...
  
  According to Turoff, the ability was created so that users who wished their terminal to print in different languages could do so. Some of the users took an initiative and personalized the interface to their interests: one person customized the responses to appear as an English (British) Butler, another so that the interface always swore at the user.

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