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Date:         Sun, 16 Aug 92 20:11:26 +1000
From:         Jack Churchill <ip_boss@DEGSYD.SYD.DEG.CSIRO.AU>
Subject:      RE: Mail User agents
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In article <9208132259.AA12725@jarrah.itd.adelaide.edu.au>,
 andrewr@itd.adelaide.edu.au writes:
>       The real problem is that you can usually rely on VMS or Unix
> machines to be up 24 hours a day to receive mail, and you can connect
> to them from anywhere, whereas PC's and Mac's are usually only on
> during office hours, and you can't connect to them from elsewhere to
> check your mail. Thus the SMTP direct to your desk concept won't work,
> as the basic assumptions about machine avalibility aren't held.
>       So the concept employed is that there is one central place
> that stays up all day, and you can access from all over the place. The
> problem now is that PC and Mac users expect a GUI as opposed to the
> CUI's we all use for VMS/Unix based mail. So the software companies
> are forced to have some wonderful interface that'll knock your socks
> off, and is necesarily different from the type that gets shunted over
> SMTP.

That's why "store and forward" methods like POP have been very popular for
PCs and MACs of late.  There some very nice looking POP client programs
available to overcome the issue of not having your personal computer
turned on all the time.

>       In summary, I agree that the current state of affairs is
> woeful, but given the time, locality, and user expectation
> constraints, I don't think it's going to get a lot better in the near
> future. And you're never going to get micro software houses to
> standardise on one mail format, unless it is almost forced on them
> from the outside.
>       I'm sure I can here a flamethrower warming up...

Not a flamethrower.  I agree that the current state is terrible.
Something has to be done to reverse the trend in the number of different
ways in implementing e-mail by various companies.  Otherwise, we will end
up with the stupid situation of requiring all sorts of complicated
gateways to handle different mailers and protocols on the same network
like the internet. And what happens if your local network uses computers
from different vendors (e.g., DEC, IBM, SGI, SUN, HP, etc)? You then have
X400 and other transports competing with SMTP. Granted Digital has some
nice solutions but so do many other vendors (most are cheaper too). Seems
to me that the best thing so far is to stay with SMTP and build up from
their with MIME-compatible mailers for PCs, MACs, VMS and UNIX systems,
which is already well underway. I hope MIME is adopted as a defacto
standard by all commercial companies like tcp/ip was, not necessarily
because I like MIME but because it works over a variety of systems and is
rapidly gaining in popularity over the internet (RFC1341). This may be the
"outside force" to get software houses to standardise on one mail format.
PMDF-MIME is a great start for VMS systems.  All we need now is a nice and
powerful front end like so many packages that are already available for
PCs, MACs, and UNIX.  Is Digital likely to provide one or do we have to
rely on the public domain?

  Jack N. Churchill                            | jack@syd.deg.csiro.au
  CSIRO  Division of Exploration Geoscience    | churchill@decus.com.au
  PO Box 136  North Ryde  NSW  2113            | Phone:  +61 2 887 8884
  Australia                                    | Fax:    +61 2 887 8909
** Unless otherwise specified, the opinions expressed here are my own. **
Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU