rschofield@lucy.wellesley.EDU (Dick Schofield) (03/17/88)
Wellesley College is in the process of evaluating alternatives to what, if I may be blunt, we consider to be a totally unacceptable VMS-Mail. To that end, I am looking, generally, for information on alternative packages and, specifically, for information/comments on MM-32 (son of MM and cousin of MS) and the University of Western Ontario mail system. The IDEAL package would run on VMS and Ultrix (and Primos?), would have a decent user interface, would be able to deliver mail to other hosts -- both local and remote (DECnet, SMTP, X.400, etc.), would support queued delivery (when one of those hosts is temporarily unavailable), would have tailorable message headers, could invoke an editor only when needed to correct an unforeseen typo, .... Please reply directly to me and I'll summarize the responses in INFO-VAX. Dick Schofield Director of Academic Computing Wellesley College Wellesley, MA 02181 (617) 235-0320 Ext. 3107 RSCHOFIELD@LUCY.WELLESLEY.EDU (Internet)
adelman@WARBUCKS.AI.SRI.COM (Kenneth Adelman) (03/22/88)
> Wellesley College is in the process of evaluating alternatives to what, if > I may be blunt, we consider to be a totally unacceptable VMS-Mail. To that > end, I am looking, generally, for information on alternative packages and, > specifically, for information/comments on MM-32 (son of MM and cousin of > MS) and the University of Western Ontario mail system. MM-32 is a mail interface that provides the complete flexibility of the DEC-20 ARPANet electronic mail systems on the VAX family of computers. MM-32 is a user interface, with it you will need a mail delivery agent. Both Pony Express and the Software Tools Mail Gateway-II are available under license from SRI International with MM-32. > The IDEAL package would run on VMS and Ultrix (and Primos?), would have a > decent user interface, would be able to deliver mail to other hosts -- both > local and remote (DECnet, SMTP, X.400, etc.), would support queued delivery > (when one of those hosts is temporarily unavailable), would have tailorable > message headers, could invoke an editor only when needed to correct an > unforeseen typo, .... The Software Tools Mail Gateway-II is a mail system based on the public domain Software Tools Mail System. The difference between it and the public domain version is a big increase in performance, mainly due to some reorganization and its own VAX C runtime I/O system, an interface to MM-32, and the ability to compile and run under GNU-CC and Eunice as well as VAX/C. The Software Tools Mail Gateway-II and MM-32 are distributed with source code. In addition to MM-32, The Software Tools Mail Gateway II includes a sharable image interface to VMSmail, an interface to MFE's TELL, and its own `peculiar' SNDMSG/MSG interface. Network interfaces to DECnet, TCP/SMTP, BITnet (RSCS), and MFE/SDSCnet are available; X.400 is still a ways down the road. Queued delivery, tailorable headers, etc, are standard on this and any other `true' mailer. The Software Tools Mail Gateway II was written with portability in mind, and has run on a variety of Unix systems including System III/V Xenix, Elxsi's ENIX, 4.2/3 BSD, and Ultrix. We are currently only distributing it for VMS, but would be happy to discuss distributions for other machines. STMG-II should port easily to any multiprocessing operating system with a C compiler, structured file system, and interprocess communication. I would be happy to discuss porting it to PRIMOS or any other operating system offline with you. For licensing information, please contact DESIREE@WARBUCKS.AI.SRI.COM directly. Kenneth Adelman SRI International