[net.micro.cpm] MAIL ACCESS TO SIMTEL20 ARCHIVES

mek%UMass.BITNET@WISCVM.ARPA (08/13/86)

(PLEASE EXCUSE THE ALL-CAPS)

I THINK THAT THE IDEA OF A SERVER GETTING MAIL COMMANDS
AND SENDING FILES IS AN *EXCELLENT* IDEA.  HOWEVER, SINCE
NOT ALL NETWORK USERS ARE USING TOPS-20, I THINK THAT FILES
SHOULD BE ABLE TO BE SENT IN OTHER FORMATS, SUCH AS .hex
FILES. FOR EXAMPLE, THERE COULD BE COMMANDS LIKE:


HEX NULU151.COM       -WOULD SEND NULU151.COM IN HEX FORMAT, TO
                       BE LOAD'ED OR HEXCOM'D.

UUE NULU151.COM       -WOULD SEND NULU151.COM IN A UUENCODED
                       FORMAT.

THERE COULD ALSO BE A DIR COMMAND, WHICH, BY ITSELF, WOULD
SEND A LIST OF THE FILE AREAS AVAILABLE, AND WITH A PARAMETER
OF A FILE AREA WOULD SEND A LIST OF THE FILES IN THAT AREA.
I THINK THAT THIS WOULD BE AN EXCELLENT SOLUTION TO THE PROBLEM
OF ACCCESS TO THE SIMTEL20 ARCHIVES BY BITNET, JANET, CSNET,
ETC.

MATT KIMMEL,
MEK%UMASS.BITNET@WISCVM.ARPA

WANCHO@SIMTEL20.ARPA (08/15/86)

Matt,

It's not that anybody is running under TOPS-20.  It's just that
TOPS-20 is the operating system used by SIMTEL20.  I feel that the
basic requirement to have ARC and uudecode available on the target
operating system is not too much to ask.  ARC is already native to
MSDOS users, and I believe there is a version of uudecode also
available.  On the CP/M side, there are several variants of at least
the extract portion of ARC available, and I believe uudecode is
available as well.

The reason for choosing these two in combination is that the resulting
message is pretty well guaranteed to be both shorter than the original
and transmittable as an ordinary text mail file.  It's not a parsing
problem; it's simply an arbitrary policy decision, for now, at least.
Let me see how things go and maybe there might be an option made
available to allow retrieval of certain key bootstrap files only in
HEX form.
--Frank