===================================================================== M I N I - H O S T for Microsoft Windows ----------------------------------- Data Management and Mail Processing ----------------------------------- Annotation to the demo-version Copyright (C) 1992, 1993, SuperPhysica Center, St.Petersburg, Russia. ===================================================================== This document is a brief description of Mini-Host project and its demonstration version. It is intended to help you in installation and evaluating the demo version as well as to better imagine the project's concepts, features and perspectives. The document is written under a supposition that the reader is familiar both with basics of Microsoft Windows graphical environment and basics of electronic mail. We strongly recommend you to read this document before you start the installation procedure. It's quite small but all the significant information is concentrated here. If you are familiar with the previous demo version of Mini-Host, it would be interesting for you to look into WHATSNEW.TXT file containing a description of main differences between two consequent demo versions. CONTENTS ------------------------------------------------------------------ GENERAL INSTALLATION Software Requirements Hardware Requirements Installation Procedure DEMO EVALUATION Populating Database of Accounts Using WinUUCP as an External Mail Transport Agent Mail Procesing CAUTIONS TRADEMARKS AND COPYRIGHTS CONTACT ADDRESSES GENERAL ------------------------------------------------------------------ Mini-Host is an integrated software package for E-mail and data processing. It works under Microsoft Windows graphical environment. Mini-Host package should give you an ability to have a convenient networking environment under Microsoft Windows. It should allow you either to organize a quite powerful email host on your PC, or to get your PC integrated into external network. The demo version is of limited part of the entire project. It includes two main parts of Mini-Host package only: the mail user agent (MUA) - Data Manager, and the UUCP mail transport agent (MTA) - WinUUCP. Demo contains several Windows applications that are not self-demonstrating ones, so you may finger their "real behavior". Each part of the demo (MUA and MTA) can be installed separately (see the INSTALLATION section of this document). INSTALLATION ------------------------------------------------------------------ Software Requirements To run demonstration version of Mini-Host, you should have Microsoft Windows 3.1 installed on your computer. To get the best look of some interface elements you should also have two standard Windows fonts installed - Helv and Courier (the Arial font might be used well as a usual substitution for Helv font). The behavior of demo applications under MS Windows 3.0 may cause some problems. Hardware Requirements You should have at least about 1.8 Mb of free space on your hard disk to keep demo system files and to create a minimal databases during evaluation. We recommend to use a PC with 4 Mb of RAM or more, although the applications can run with less memory. As for video, it would be better to look at the demo with SVGA (800x600) or higher resolution. Installation Procedure If you have got the demo installation files in the archived form you should unpack the archive either into floppy diskette or into separate temporary directory on your hard drive (e.g. C:\TMP). Then you should launch Microsoft Windows (if you are running MS DOS) and start the INSTALL.EXE application. An installation procedure is changed significantly since previous demo version. Earlier it allowed you just to specify several directories that should be used by Mini-Host. Now it allows you also to initialize Mini-Host's databases and configuration so that you would get a minimal ready-to-run system immediately after installation is completed. An installation procedure now has the following three main steps: registration, files installation, and setup. Below are a brief guidelines for how to go theough these steps. Registration. The first dialog you see is a Registration dialog where you have to enter your real name and the name of your organization (company or department). Further these names will be used as a respective attributes of postmaster. NOTE: Demo verson does not require for you to specify the valid serial number of Mini-Host copy. Files and directories. After successfull registration, you will be prompted to specify main installation options: INSTALL - you may install either entire demo, or one of two parts (mail user agent or mail transport agent) of product. DIRECTORIES Windows - the MS Windows directory on your machine (it is determined automatically) where initialization files are to be placed. Source - a directory of the source binaries for installation (it is determined automatically). Executables - a directory where all the demo executable files should be placed. Database - a directory where all the databases should be created. Mail - a directory where mail system files (spooler, routes and aliases tables) should be placed. OPTIONS Install BWCC - demo applications use the Borland's Windows custom control DLL (BWCC.DLL); if you have this library already installed on your machine installator will detect it automatically and suggest you to install the library supplied to demo only if it's version is newer than one of your library. Create Group - if you use the Program Manager as a shell in your Windows graphical environment, you may check on this option and the setup program will create a special application group for Mini-Host demo applications. After you've specified all the preferred options, you may press the OK button and the installator will copy all the required files into appropriate directories. Setup (initialization of the database and configuration). After all the Mini-Host files are installed on your HD, you will be prompted to perform minimal initialization of the system: - to setup your mail host; - to setup an account for postmaster; - to setup your primary mailserver; - to setup your modem. All the dialogs designed for these procedures are supplied by on-line help information, so this document does not contain any descriptions. However, one have to note that it is recommended for you to go through all four steps and not to change default settings where it is possible. DEMO EVALUATION ------------------------------------------------------------------ Here we would like to suggest you the most effective scenario of demo evaluation (where you can avoid some redundant difficulties). Populating Database of Accounts First, you have to pay your attention on the change of terminology since the previous version of Mini-Host: there is no longer such common meaning of the term "user". Now the term "account" is used to signify various users and remote hosts that have an access to your system. There are two types of account: an account for the user (human) and an account for the host (mailserver). Initially (immediately after installation) the Accounts Database usually contains two accounts already: a user account for postmater and a host account for your primary mailserver. In principle, this is enough for your host to be involved into the global UUCP communications. However you might want to add additional accounts to your system (e.g. in order to test just local mailing, or to test connections with various remote hosts). To do this you have to use Account Setup application. Using WinUUCP as an External Mail Transport Agent Our MTA - WinUUCP application - can be used as an external mail transport agent for several famous Windows-based E-mail packages. There is WUSML.EXE application to be an entry point to WinUUCP. For example, see CMM.SET file to get information about how to use WinUUCP with Cinetic Mail Manager. Mail Procesing Our MUA - Data Manager - allows you to perform almost all the basic mail operations. Also it provides some additional features. You can evaluate the following operations and procedures in demo version: - creation, modification and support of tree-like structure of folders; - creation and sending of new mail; replying and forwarding of received mail (particularly, conference articles may be handled in the same way as regular mail). - importing of messages from standard mailboxes on your machine and vise versa; - encoding/decoding of mail by means of built-in UUENCODE/UUDECODE converter; - search operations against the mail database; - creation and usage of simple Address Database; - usage of mail message templates and patterns; - usage of default properties of new mail; - etc. We suppose that some user interface details of Data Manager (and maybe even overall user interface concept) are quite different from what we have ever seen among various mail-related software products. So the primer interest for us would be your responses about user interface of the product. This would affect the future development of the entire project. CAUTIONS ------------------------------------------------------------------ The main limitations of the demo version of Mini-Host are: 1) WinUUCP allows you to transfer a limited number of messages per session. 2) The system does not contain any internal call scheduler. 3) WinUUCP does not allow to transfer squeezed mail. 4) Data Manager does not allow you to print mail messages. 5) Data Manager does not allow you to perform complex conditional search operations against your mail database. 6) Data Manager does not allow to read/write messages that have size larger than 32 Kb (however, such large incoming messages may be stored in the mail database). 7) There is no any help supplied to the applications (neither on-line nor documentation) except this document and Q&A.TXT file. However, you may ask us directly for any help information (see CONTACT ADDRESSES section of this document). Data Manager still may contain some bugs, so we do not guarantee that the mail database created by demo version would not be corrupted one day. There is some special utility to repair corrupted databases, but it is not included in demo package. However, Mini-Host applications are much more stable now (in comparison with the previous demo version). TRADEMARKS AND COPYRIGHTS ------------------------------------------------------------------ MS DOS and Windows are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. BWCC.DLL is copyrighted by Borland International. This demonstartion package is being under the copyright of SuperPhysica Center. It may be freely distributed provided neither applications nor this document are not modified. CONTACT ADDRESSES ------------------------------------------------------------------ The Mini-Host project is developed by SuperPhysica Center, St.Petersburg, Russia. Software development team: Wojciech Rizhy - ideas, system analysis. Yaroslav Mezheritsky - senjor project manager, user interface. Eugene Vernikovsky - databases. Alex Shturm - communications. Sasha Migalovsky - communications. Denis Seriogin - assistance. Vladimir Tarasov - assistance. Administration: Levon Grigorian - commercial director. Kirill Dmitriev - manager. Contact us: Internet/Relcom: minihost@sph.spb.su minihost%sph.spb.su@ussr.eu.net Sovam Teleport/IASNet: sph@sovamsu.sovusa.com FidoNet: 2:5030/8.61 Snail: SuperPhysica Center, 190031, POB 418, St.Petersburg, Russia. Phones: +7 (812) 310-4631 +7 (812) 232-1661 All the contact addresses above are open for your questions, opinions, critics and recommendations. Any responses would be greatly appreciated. ================================================================= END OF DOCUMENT =================================================================