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Path: utzoo!utgpu!utcsri!utegc!lamy
From: lamy@utegc.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.mail.misc
Subject: Re: X.400 ean mail system
Message-ID: <8708270054.AA02979@ephemeral.ai.toronto.edu>
Date: Wed, 26-Aug-87 20:54:35 EDT
Article-I.D.: ephemera.8708270054.AA02979
Posted: Wed Aug 26 20:54:35 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 30-Aug-87 07:23:35 EDT
Organization: University of Toronto, AI group
Lines: 44
Checksum: 04040

In article <186@bernina.UUCP> wyle@ethz.UUCP (Mitchell Wyle) writes:
>The public domain, University of California Berkeley's (UCB) Unix mail
>system is not much better, but at least there is no "rebuild" command,
>and the files are standard unix text files.  One can use the Unix shell
>environment, the "mail-tool" interface on Suns, and the file directory
>tree to add structure to mail messages.  UCB Unix mail is programmable
>and richer in commands.  It is standard on many different machines, and
>identical on Suns and vaxen.  Most importantly, the data are
>interchangeable, and can be backed up!

UCB mail is not public domain, and it does not really mesh well with the Unix
directories (retrieving an individual message is a pain).  There is no
programmability either.  The mailtool on the Suns does not allow you to chose
which editor you want to edit the messages.  UCB mail is not screen oriented.
In fact, I must admit that I really don't give much credence to your claim
that UCB mail's interface is any richer than EAN's.  Yes, I have used both.

ELM will give you a screen oriented interface. If you want full
configurability, then use MH, from within an editor if you wish.  MH uses the
directory structure for folders and gives you a query facility to retrieve
messages.

In fact, there is no real reason either why you can't have the best of all
worlds.  This message is composed in a MH mode in GNU-emacs (with roughly the
same features as mailtool), will be processed by the standard Unix sendmail,
and may end up being sent by EAN, acting as a message transfer agent (we also
have connection to the Internet, UUCP and Bitnet). Getting EAN to
interface with other mailers can be a pain, but there is hope (this site
is a living proof that an interface with the standard Unix setup can be done,
and the VMS/EAN gatewaying seems to work fine as well),  In other words,
a little patience may be in order.

Wrt your comment about parse errors, note that even relay.cs.net
will complain about (hackish) addresses with a % in them.  I don't see
this as a problem with EAN.

I am not the greatest fan of X.400 mail (especially with respect to 
the proposed organization-oriented directory service), but I don't think
EAN is such a bad deal for a site with a single connection to the outside
world.

Jean-Francois Lamy                      lamy@ai.toronto.edu (CSnet,UUCP,Bitnet)
AI Group, Dept of Computer Science      lamy@ai.toronto.cdn (EAN X.400)
University of Toronto, Canada M5S 1A4   {seismo,watmath}!ai.toronto.edu!lamy