andy@jhunix.HCF.JHU.EDU (Andy S Poling) (12/01/90)
I know this is becoming one of those very oft-asked questions, but I have some specific twists and I think I may have missed some discussions anyway so here goes... We are looking at providing PC and Mac users with mail service using the POP2 and/or POP3 protocols. Because we will be providing this service to virtually anybody who has access to the campus ethernet, we're primarily interested in publicly available software. So far, I've begun by experimenting with PCs because I have easier access to them and there seem to be more packages available for them. I have tried two clients so far: PopMail and PCPop. The first problem I've encountered is that while these packages are both based upon the POP2 protocol, they both require extensions to the protocol - they will not work with a POP2 server which impliments with the protocol as set forth in RFC937. I have not yet found any PC clients which use the newer and more extensive POP3 protocol. Here are the attributes I'm searching for in PC and/or Mac POP clients: - either publicly available or inexpensively site-licenseable (sp?) - use of the Clarkson Packet Driver Spec for PCs or MacTCP for Macs (i.e. - no expensive commercial package reliance) - fully compliant with either the POP2 or POP3 protocol (i.e. requiring no protocol extensions) - ideally available for both PC and Mac platforms so we can have one "standard" user interface I'm not asking for much, am I? :-) I'll send a summary of responses to anyone requesting one, and I will also make a summary of responses available for anonymous FTP from jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu (128.220.2.5) in "pub/POP/whats_out_there". In fact I'm willing to start a mailing list for POP client and server discussion if people are interested. In other words, I'm willing to put forth some effort to provide an organized method of obtaining POP availability and operability information. I realize that there's probably not enough interest for a newsgroup, but I think a mailing list is a good start... To subscribe to the POP mailing list, send a message to "pop-request@jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu", or "pop-request@jhunix" if you are on the BITNET or UUCP networks. So fire away. Send me your recommendations for POP clients, requests for summaries, and requests to be on the POP mailing list. Lets get something goin' here! -Andy -- Andy Poling Internet: andy@gollum.hcf.jhu.edu UNIX Systems Programmer Bitnet: ANDY@JHUNIX Homewood Academic Computing Voice: (301)338-8096 Johns Hopkins University UUCP: uunet!mimsy!aplcen!jhunix!andy