May 8

Copied Ryan's work here, and made a copy that I could modify
without changing his original.

 $ su root
 $ cp -r /home/rdolan/Basic-Mail ./Basic-Mail_ryan
 $ chown -R mahoney .
 $ su mahoney
 $ cp -r Basic-Mail_ryan Basic-Mail_jim
 $ cd Basic-Mail_jim
   #  * edited directory=... in variables.py.
   #  * Ryan says the path must end in a slash.

I see there's another copy in /home/rdolan/html/python/Basic-Mail
though I'm not sure which is more recent.

 $ rm *.pyc
 $ python basic-mail.py

Got an error:   ... No module named "chat" ...

Looks like there was a chat.pyc but no chat.py - 
though there is a chat.py in the Older/ directory.
And there's one in ~rdolan/html/python/Basic-Mail, too.

OK, try again, using the version in the html directory.

 $ cd ..
 $ rm -rf Basic_Mail_jim
 $ cp -r ~rdolan/html/python/Basic-Mail ./Basic-Mail_ryan_html
 $ cp -r Basic-Mail_ryan_html Basic-Mail_jim
   # edited directory in variables.py again.
 $ cd Basic-Mail_jim
 
This directory doesn't have any .pyc modules.

 # Just so I don't kill my terminal, let's try this in a new window.
 $ xterm &
 $ python basic-mail.py
 Thank you! The interface has broken and you have found a bug~

So I still haven't managed to get this to work.

From a mac terminal window (which it kills)
I get an "curs_set() return ERR" message.

Ryan says it works on cs in his /home/ryan/Basic/Mail,
so I'll try that ... even though it doesn't have chat.py.

That works ... mostly.

 $ su
 $ cd /home/rdolan/Basic-Mail
 $ xterm &
 $ ./basic-mail.py
 
I wonder if this version is consistent with the other chat.py.

 $ mv chat.pyc chat_pyc
 $ cp ../Basic-Mail_ryan_html/chat.py .
 $ xterm
 $ ./basic-mail.py

And it still works; so I guess I do now have the most recent working code.
... however, nothing in the versions tells me what's been changed to
get it to work on cs ... just the note on cs that is is working.