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Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watnot!watmath!clyde!rutgers!mit-eddie!uw-beaver!ubc-vision!van-bc!sl
From: sl@van-bc.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix,comp.mail.uucp
Subject: Re: uucp mail inefficiency
Message-ID: <561@van-bc.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 3-Apr-87 14:07:31 EST
Article-I.D.: van-bc.561
Posted: Fri Apr  3 14:07:31 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 5-Apr-87 10:21:40 EST
References: <7326@boring.mcvax.cwi.nl> <2629@phri.UUCP>
Reply-To: sl@van-bc.UUCP (Stuart Lynne)
Organization: Public Access Network, Vancouver, BC.
Lines: 66
Keywords: uucp uucico kermit
Xref: utgpu comp.os.minix:504 comp.mail.uucp:406

In article <2629@phri.UUCP> roy@phri.UUCP (Roy Smith) writes:
>In article <7326@boring.mcvax.cwi.nl> jack@boring.UUCP (Jack Jansen) writes:
>> one of the gross misfeatures of most uucp's is [...] for small files, the
>> overhead is enourmous (two files transmitted for each tiny mail message)
>
>commands.  Uucp itself doesn't know from mail at all.  It would be trivial
>(or at least straight-forward) to design a batched mail system which ran on
>top of uucp -- take all the messages bound for a given site and batch them
>into a single data file and a single XQT file for transmission.  You could

It is. And there's even a standard (sort of). AT&T Mail accepts "bundles" of
mail from PC type machines (via XModem but that's not overly important).
These bundles consist of multiple messages, each message has a header called
"Content-Length:" which has the size in bytes of the content part of the
message. This allows simple unbatching of the mail at the other end because
the receiver knows when to start looking for the next message. The addresses
are carried in the message with "To:" header lines.

This is not strictly 822 compatible, but if AT&T can do it.....

I have two programs just about finished which will: 

	pcmail: create a mail bundle on a PC.
	
	rpcmail: unbundle on a Unix system, feeding the messages to 
			rmail one at a time. Addresses taken from To: lines.

PC: command for sending mail to unix

		uux unix!rpcmail < mailbundle


>even compress the files before sending them (just like news does).  I'm not


PC: command for sending compressed mail bundle to unix

		uux unix!rpcmailz < `zcat mailbundle`

Unix: rpcmailz script for receving compressed bundles

		zcat | rpcmail 

If there is interest I will post these to net when tested (between my Mac
and Callan with uuslave or rz/sz).


Post Script. 

I think that mail transport to / from PC's will be solved in the next
few months thanks to the efforts of John Gilmore and such getting uuslave
whipped into shape. 

What we need now is a nice mail/news reader program.  Assume mail and 
news coming into the PC, but only mail going out. To post news articles 
mail them to a nearby unix host who can set up a "postnews" postbox using
recnews to receive and post the article. 

Does anyone know if there's a new version of IMS (Intelligent Mail
System). This looks like it might be a good starting point for above. Who
wrote IMS? The copy I have contains no information about copyright,
ownership, or authorship.


-- 
Stuart Lynne	ihnp4!alberta!ubc-vision!van-bc!sl     Vancouver,BC,604-937-7532