Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!hplabs!hp-ses!hpcuhb!hpindda!carlson
From: carlson@hpindda.HP.COM (Bob Carlson)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Notes feed for a MAC?
Message-ID: <40260010@hpindda.HP.COM>
Date: 13 Mar 89 22:50:43 GMT
References: <40260007@hpindda.HP.COM>
Organization: HP Information Networks, Cupertino, CA
Lines: 86

Here's another response which promises some help with the software
side of the question.

Cheers, Bob

______________

MACINTOSH UUCP/MAIL/NEWS INFORMATION (as of 6-Mar-89)

Using a combination of public domain, modified, and original programs, I have
successfully hooked up a Macintosh onto the UUCP network.  Currently, only mail
can be read and received.  USENET news is planned.

Following is some brief information on the various programs.

* UUCP -- I'm using John Gilmore's "gnuucp" program.  He took his "uuslave"
program (posted to the net a while back, I think, and available on a few BBSs)
and rewrote it.  It had no Mac support (only PC, Amiga, Unix, and a few
others), so I added that, as well as a little PC Pursuit support. There is
built-in support for Hayes-compatible modems, but other modems should be usable
as well.  John once said that gnuucp did *not* currently work with the Telebit
Trailblazer high-speed modems (some problem with the spoofing mode, I assume).
Hopefully it will one day.  The program seems to work relatively well. However,
it's only in beta test now. I've been trying to send messages to John to tell
him what I've done, but he seems to be out of town for a couple of weeks.  When
he gets back, I'll hopefully find out the status of gnuucp, and insert my
changes into his master code.  I assume he will generally release the program.

* UUXQT -- This takes the incoming UUCP work files, puts them into a certain
format, and then queues the files up for various programs to work on. For
instance, mail is queued for the RMAIL program (see below) to pick up, news is
queued for RNEWS, etc.)

* RMAIL -- This takes queued mail files from either the user mail program or
from UUQXT and sends them to remote or local users, depending on what the
address looks like.  It's not very smart yet -- if it doesn't know an host
name, it sends it off to a defined relay site that is supposed to know how to
get to the given host.  It's also not very smart about parsing addresses (for
instance, you must use UUCP-format addresses ("site!user") rather than
internet-format addresses ("user@site")).

* MAIL -- This is the user mail program.  It reads a standard Unix-format mail
file (with the starting "From " line for each message) and displays them in
windows.  It's not quite finished yet -- I don't as yet rewrite the mail file,
so messages can't be deleted.  And there are still a few bugs in how addresses
are formatted.

I based UUXQT and RMAIL on programs that were distributed with DCP (another
version of UUCP that was posted on the net), but have rewritten them entirely,
and I don't think there's an original line left.  MAIL was written from scratch
by me.

MAIL has a full Mac interface, with menus, windows, buttons, and so on.  It's
not yet very pretty, but it works ok.  The interface will be improved as time
goes on and as it gets more use.

GNUUCP UUXQT, and RMAIL are currently using the Unix-like stdio library,
where diagnostic and status messages are display in a scrolling window of
text.  UUXQT and RMAIL will be converted to use a standard Mac interface
before they are released.  Since GNUUCP is portable to various other
machines, I'd rather not add a full window/menu interface to it.  However,
I probably will add some kind of front-end so a user isn't required to
type a Unix-like command line.

All the programs have been developed and tested on a standard Mac Plus with 1
meg of RAM, running system version 6.0.2.  As of yet, none of the programs have
anything special that require any particular system version, except HFS.  I
will probably at some point add some niceties like pop-up menus to the MAIL
program, however.

All are compilable with LightSpeed C 3.0p4.

I will be working on a news interface once I get a higher speed modem (i.e., a
Trailblazer).  It will, of course, have a full Mac interface, with windows and
buttons and the like.

If you are interested in beta-testing any of these, let me know.  As I said,
there's still more to do before the beta stage, but I'll definitely need some
testing (and suggestions) after that.

Let me know if you want to know more.


John Labovitz
wb3ffv!sly!xylo (the macintosh)
jsl@cup.portal.com