🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Oct13.113431.7685@infodev.cam.ac.uk> ag129@cus.cam.ac.uk (Alasdair Grant) writes:
>In article <1992Oct13.054709.22181@netcom.com> ptrubey@netcom.com (Phil Trubey) writes:
>>Am I missing something here?  Why is it that I seem to be the only person
>>who thinks that MIME based e-mail packages can take on the very profitable,
>>yet proprietary mass market e-mail packages like Microsoft Mail (aka Network
>>Courier), Lotus cc:Mail, Da Vinci E-Mail, etc?
>
>MIME is just a content encoding. The mail packages you mention are all 
>transport mechanisms as well. So you would have to run MIME over something,
>like POP2/POP3/IMAP2/IMAP3/..., and these protocols are not stable enough
>to be attractive to many commercial vendors, I suspect. IMAP2bis is pretty
>new and even now they seem to be talking about replacing it with something
>from Carnegie-Mellon. 

Yeah, I was thinking of using something like POP3 or IMAP - or both.

>Of course, each of these protocols is IP-based, which
>has its own problems in the PC/Mac environment, such as requirements for
>packet/NDIS/ODI drivers (and IP/IPX multiplexers if necessary, etc. etc.),
>and RARP/BOOTP servers etc. And isn't MacTCP a commercial product?

Yep, this is a problem.  One way you could get around it would be to use
POP3/IMAP over IPX, NetBios, ASDP - of course, you might lose something
in terms of interoperability.

Yes, MacTCP is commercial, but it is also licensable and that's what most
TCP/IP based applications do in the Mac world (license it).

>What might be interesting is a PC-based MUA talking P7 and using MIME as
>a content-encoding.

What is P7?
-- 

Phil Trubey                   | Internet: ptrubey@netcom.com
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