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1996-09-13
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Article 154853 of comp.os.vms:
Last week I posted details of the latest BETA version of PINE 3.91 for VMS.
A new beta is now available (Beta 7) which contains a number of bug fixes to
BETA 6.
Details are enclosed below for those interested.
Regards,
Andy Harper
Kings College London
What is IMAP ?
--------------
Several people asked 'what is IMAP' after my earlier message went around. Well
it's a protocol that allows a client to access mailboxes on a server. It
differs from the POP protocol in a number of key areas:
* POP only accesses the NEWMAIL folder; IMAP can access any folder
* POP downloads messages to the client; IMAP keeps them on the server
(in either case, messages can be downloaded or left on the server if you
wish but access to such messages with POP becomes tricky). POP is not
good for people who move from PC to PC, whereas IMAP handles this neatly.
* POP can only read a mailbox and delete items from it; IMAP can
additionally search, rename and store (though therse are not implemented
in this VMS port). This allows suitable clients to move messages between
folders on different systems.
What Mail clients use IMAP?
---------------------------
Most of the clients around still use POP (Eudora, pegasus, netscape mail etc.)
but a number are starting to incoporate IMAP access to0. The commercial one we
use is called Simeon by ESYS Corporation (this is not a recommendation and I
have no connection with the company!) and there is a freeware one called
ATISMAIL around. There's also talk of adding IMAP to NETSCAPE mail and perhaps
EUDORA. It IS an internet 'standard' and is therefore likely to become more
prevalent over time.
What about this IMAP server?
----------------------------
We had a need for a functional IMAP server on our VMS systems, and a number of
others seemed to be interested too, so I set about finding one. One such is the
IMAPD server included with the PINE software from Univ. of Washington, which
was ported to VMS by Yehavi Bourvine (based on the one included in the PINE
3.91 kit from U of Washington). This was known as 3.91 beta 5 for VMS.
I've updated Yehavi's port with some additional bug fixes and features and
my latest beta is 3.91 Beta 7. Although there are later releases of pine (3.95
is current I believe) there are no working VMS ports (though 3.95 does include
a partial port which is grossly incomplete). My improvements to 3.91 are
primarily:
* Fixing some problems with PINE sending mail out
* Completing the port of the IMAP server
* Fully supporting the NETLIB TCP/IP interface
* Adding a few new features, such as logging and decnet node mapping
* Supporting builds with DEC C 5.3 and VAXC 3.2, on both VAX and ALPHA
AVAILABILITY:
-------------
FTP:
ftp://ftp2.kcl.ac.uk/zip/pine_3_91_beta_7.zip (ZIP format)
MAIL:
mailto:vmsserv@kcl.ac.uk (VMS_SHARE format)
Use the single line SEND PINE.PACKAGE as the only line in the body of
the message.
CHANGES MADE:
-------------
3.91 Beta 7 - Changes since 3.91 Beta 6
---------------------------------------
PINE:
-----
* Fixed a bug in the use of a foreign protocol mail interface (used only if
the smtp-server is not defined in the pine configuration interface, and
selected with the logical name PINE_MAIL_PROTOCOL). There were several
problems found and fixed in the vms_mail_send routine:
- No distinction was made between addresses in the TO: field and the CC:
field.
- Each line of pine's mail file was copied separately to the message body
(This seemed to have a bug causing an access violation) rather than
using the special filename option in callable mail.
- The calls to the callable mail interface specified that a routine
should be called for each successful delivery but this routine was
define with the wrong number of parameters (zero instead of three).
12-SEP-1996
* Fixed a very strange timing bug in the purge_status_message() routine
which supplied sleep with a zero value and somehow locked up when trying
to send a message. I've inserted a check to always supply a positive
value to sleep.
11-SEP-1996
* With debugging (-d switch) active, the .PINE-DEBUGx file was being
created correctly but the code to rename the highest version did not
delete any previous version. Of course, it was originally written for unix
where renaming into an existing file destroys the existing copy. On VMS it
doesn't, but preserves the older version. As this is not required
behaviour, the code has been modified to explicitly delete the highest
version if it exists.
11-SEP-1996
* Merged changes and installation/configuration files into a single
aaareadme.txt file.
11-SEP-1996
* Added some info to the aaareadme.txt file about the configuration file
usage and contents.
11-SEP-1996
* The version ID was still at 3.91-vms-b4; changed it to 3.91-vms-beta7
to properly reflect the current version number.
11-SEP-1996
* The DEBUG code is now compiled in to the PINE utility by default. It is
controlled by the '-d' switch on the PINE command line.
11-SEP-1996
* PINE was attempting to read the default system configuration from the
SYS$MANAGER directory rather than from the directory defined by the
logical name PINE_CONF_DIR.
This has now been fixed.
11-SEP-1996
* PINE was attempting to read the fixed system configuration from the
directory defined by the logical name UTIL$ rather than PINE_CONF_DIR.
This has now been fixed.
11-SEP-1996
* The wrong build procedure for PINE was inadvertently supplied. It did not
have appropriate changes added to properly distinguish VAX C and DEC C
and could confuse compilations under both compilers. This has now been
corrected and the right build procedure is now supplied. This did not
prevent the building of PICO or the IMAPD daemon.
11-SEP-1996