mrc@Tomobiki-Cho.CAC.Washington.EDU (Mark Crispin) (03/23/90)
Recently there have been a lot of messages on TCP-IP asking about
POP-based software. There is an alternative to POP, IMAP, described
in RFC-1064. The IMAP protocol is technically superior to POP; it
provides significantly more advanced server functionality (including
server-based RFC-822 parsing and a server-based search engine) which
allows for simpler, yet more powerful, clients.
We've been chary about advertising, since we're actively working on
various IMAP-based tools and don't want people to get the wrong idea
about our software based on incomplete development versions. However,
that doesn't mean that IMAP is vapor; it's been in use at Stanford
University, the University of Washington, NTT, and other organizations
for years.
A beta IMAP distribution is available for anonymous FTP as
pub/imap.tar.Z from Internet host ftphost.CAC.Washington.EDU, IP
address [128.95.112.1]. On Unix, the commands "uncompress imap.tar.Z"
followed by "tar xf imap.tar" will give you an IMAP directory.
This distribution includes:
(1) IMAP client for Xerox Lisp (no further development planned)
(2) IMAP server for DEC-20/TOPS-20 (no further development planned)
(3) IMAP server for BSD Unix (contact yeager@SUMEX-AIM.STANFORD.EDU
for updates; this software is under
active development)
(4) Portable IMAP client library in C, with OS-dependent interfaces
for BSD Unix, TOPS-20, Macintosh, and MS-DOS.
(4a) portable "test" IMAP client
(4b) BSD Unix IMAP client with MM-like interface
(4c) NeXT GUI client in advanced and stripped-down form (contact
me for updates; this software is being
changed daily)
Sources to everything except for (4c) are included. In addition,
Stanford University has developed a Macintosh client; contact
yeager@SUMEX-AIM.STANFORD.EDU for information on how to obtain a beta
copy. I have been contacted by various individuals who are developing
MS-DOS clients; I don't know if any have been released yet.
The main thrust of my recent efforts has been in the NeXT client. I
should caution that the NeXT GUI client is still in beta test and that
one functionality (the address book) doesn't work at all. However, it
has been operable enough for me to use as my primary mail UA for a
year now.lear@turbo.bio.net (Eliot) (03/24/90)
In IMAP, you've advertised as as a feature great server search facilities, and the fact that the server protects the client from as much state as possible. It would seem to me that such an approach would produce a bottleneck of server resources far faster than POP would. In a large scale arena such as SUMEX, would it not be better to design a protocol where you assume that the free cycles will be on MANY client machines, rather than a few servers? I suppose taken to extremes I should stick to FTP, but I would see where both POP and IMAP (and FTP) have their places... -- Eliot Lear [lear@turbo.bio.net]
gz@spt.entity.com (Gail Zacharias) (03/24/90)
There is one thing that IMAP understands that POP doesn't, and that is that I want to KEEP MY MAIL ON THE SERVER. I don't want to delete it from the server just because I'm reading it on a mac! I'm not willing to keep all my mail on a mac, where I do software development and crash all the time (and I can't even dial up to it if I want to check on some old messages from home). Our server is backed up daily, and that's where my mail is going to live. So I sure hope some good IMAP clients (on the level of TechMail, say) appear so I can start using the mac to maintain my mail, SOME OF THE TIME. -- gz@entity.com ...!mit-eddie!spt!gz Unix: when you can't afford the very best.
amanda@mermaid.intercon.com (Amanda Walker) (03/25/90)
In article <325@spt.entity.com>, gz@spt.entity.com (Gail Zacharias) writes: > There is one thing that IMAP understands that POP doesn't, and that is that I > want to KEEP MY MAIL ON THE SERVER. I don't want to delete it from the server > just because I'm reading it on a mac! This depends some on the POP client, though... at least one (ours :-)) lets you select whether you want to acknowledge with ACKD (which deletes the message from the server) and ACKS (which keeps ("saves") it in your mailbox on the server). IMAP2 does look like a good compromise between the bare simplicity of POP and the almost OSI-grade complexitude of PCMAIL, though :-). -- Amanda Walker InterCon Systems Corporation "Dans la vie y'a des hauts pis des bas, des choses qui sont et d'autres qui ne sont pas." --Lucie Blue Tremblay