Fernmail is an application for reading and sending electronic mail via uucp. It is intended to be compatible with several different uucp transport engines, including uupc 2.1 and uupc 3.0 (and their pcmail reader/sender applications), UUMac (and its SuperCard mail reader/sender), and Mac/gnuucp 4.3 and 4.6 (and its MailReader stack).
You'll have to configure Fernmail appropriately for whichever uucp transport-engine you use. It will NOT run correctly "right out of the box," because the sample configuration file makes reference to disks and directories which probably don't exist on your system. You'll need to use ResEdit to perform the customization.
Getting started
If you don't already have a working uucp setup on your Macintosh, I suggest that you get one before you start working with Fernmail. You can get either uupc 3.0, or Mac/gnuucp 4.3, from any of a number of Internet archive sites (try SUMEX-AIM.Stanford.Edu and CS.UTexas.Edu) and from well-stocked Mac-oriented bulletin-board systems. You can get uupc 3.0 from me, via electronic mail. You can get a copy of UUMac from Bob Denny at Alisa Systems (denny@dcthree.alisa.com). You can get a copy of Mac/gnuucp from Jim O'Dell (jim@fpr.com).
If you have never set up or run a uucp-based communications system before, you should probably study up on the subject before trying to install either Fernmail or either of the uucp packages with which it works. It's not a simple job, and probably isn't appropriate for the complete novice to tackle as a first project. Fortunately, there's a good source of information available... a Nutshell handbook entitled "Managing UUCP and USENET". It's published by O'Reilly and Associates (ISBN 0-937175-48-X).
Upgrading from an older release of Fernmail
If you have Fernmail 1.0, or one of the many beta-test releases of Fernmail 1.1, you can upgrade your configuration "in place". Replace your copy of the older version of Fernmail with a fresh copy of Fernmail 1.1. Do NOT replace your existing configuration file; you'll lose your registration cookie if you do. Instead, read the "Configuration" section of this document, open your configuration file with ResEdit, and add any resources that your configuration doesn't have. You can copy the ones in the sample Fernmail config file included with the Fernmail 1.1 distribution, and use them with little or no editing. You may wish to rebuild your Desktop file or database, so that Fernmail 1.1's new text-file icon appears… to do this, reboot your Mac, and hold down the command and option keys until the Finder asks for permission to rebuild.
For whom is Fernmail designed?
Fernmail is designed to [attempt to] meet some of the needs of a reasonably experienced Mac user and email addict. It's not set up as a "plug and play" program... "some assembly is required." The skills and experience necessary to configure Fernmail for use are roughly equivalent to the skills needed to configure uupc 3.0 or Mac/gnuucp; much of the information needed by Fernmail is identical to information used when configuring these UUCP transport programs.
Well… let me be a bit more honest with respect to my first statement above. Fernmail was originally designed to meet my need/want/craving for a Mac-based mail reading and sending program, which would do the sorts of things that I want such a program to do. I built it because I wanted a reliable, stable email connection for my Mac, at a time when my access to an email connection at my place of employment was about to vanish (because the company itself was going out of business). I've puttered with Fernmail for some months now, sent out beta-test versions to other users of uucp-on-Macintoshes, added and modified features based on my own desires and on suggestions from the beta-testers. The result, I believe, is reasonably effective at meeting the needs it was intended to address. If it should happen to meet some of your needs, too… that's great!
What isn't there yet?
There are a number of things that I plan to add to Fernmail, but which haven't made it into this version:
• More mailbox and disk-file accelerators and shortcuts.
• Mailbox-access interlocks, to permit the inbound-mail mailbox to be accessed safely even while uucp is running and delivering mail, and to permit multiple Macs to send and read mail via an AppleTalk network.
• Support for System 7 aliases.
• Undo.
• Automatic "You have new mail, want to read it?" checks and prompts.
• Automatic hiding or removal of specified mail headers, based on a pattern matching process specified in the configuration file.
These, and perhaps other improvements and enhancements, will show up in future versions if [1] I decide that they're important enough to spend time implementing and/or [2] enough people send in their shareware payments and urge me to add the features.
