Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!asuvax!ncar!boulder!gore!jacob
From: jacob@gore.com (Jacob Gore)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: NeXT Review;Quite a machine, but not a Mac
Message-ID: <130064@gore.com>
Date: 20 Mar 90 18:09:30 GMT
References: <404@toaster.SFSU.EDU>
Reply-To: jacob@gore.com (Jacob Gore)
Organization: Gore Enterprises
Lines: 42

/ comp.sys.next / jgreely@oz.cis.ohio-state.edu (J Greely) / Mar 20, 1990 /
> Fortunately, NeXT doesn't lock you into [Mail application as mail user
> agent]

Doesn't it?  What's the format of Next-attachments: line?

I use MMDF on my machine because I can't stand sendmail.  I use 'msg' and
'send' as my user agents because Mail (by "Mail" I mean the NeXT Mail
application, not /usr/ucb/Mail) is not configurable to work with any Mail
Transfer Agent other than sendmail, and because Mail's user interface is
less user-friendly than msg's (although it is much prettier).  For example,
in msg I can hit 'h' (expands to "headers") 'f' (expands to "from")
"greely" and it will list the headers of all messages from J Greely that I
have saved in my big "next" mailbox.  In Mail, you have to visually scan
the headers, which makes it poorly suited for people who get large volume
of mail.

However, by switching to 'msg', I loose my "NeXT mail" capabilities.  I
can't easily read RTF-formated messages and those that include pictures,
voice and WriteNow documents.  I can manually uudecode/untar/etc, but it's
a hassle.  Similarly, I cannot use 'send' to easily produce such mail.

So what are my options?  Well, the easiest fix would be to modify Mail to
have an option to work with other MTAs -- I would do MMDF, and somebody
else could do SMAIL.  But Ne"nah, you don't need sources"XT doesn't think
so.

Another option would be to write a reader for "NeXT mail" into which one
can just pipe a "NeXT mail" message from msg.  But NeXT doesn't think we
need to know the semantics of the Next-attachments: line.

A third option is to write a complete GUI-based user agent to replace Mail,
and I've actually done some work on that, but had to set it aside because I
need to get my PhD finished...  (If anybody is interested in seeing what I
got, I can mail it to them.)

So true, we may not be locked into using Mail, but we certainly have a few
Dobermans to fight off!

Jacob
--
Jacob Gore		Jacob@Gore.Com			boulder!gore!jacob