🚀 go-pugleaf

On Fri, 16 Mar 90 17:31:36 GMT you said:
>Does anyone know of ways to gateway PROFS into a UNIX SMTP
>environment?
>
How about trashing PROFS and getting a "real" mail system????  You can replace
the PF2 (Open Mail) with something like a call to MAIL/MAILBOOK.

Basically, no matter what you do to PROFS the solution is not real pretty
since PROFS is so brain-damaged to begin with.  If you really want to do this
there is a number of ways to do this.  Here is 3 or 4 of them.  All center
around getting IBM's TCP/IP product (FAL) which provides SMTP capabilities.
After that you can:

1.) use the standard facilities of FAL.  This involves embedding special
    commands WITHIN the text of you PROFS notes and then sending the notes
    to the SMTP machine.  This is clumsy and received notes are not always
    replyable.  As Bill Rubin said this is not recommended, but it does get
    the mail delivered.

2.) install PROFS Extended Mail on top of PROFS.  While this is cheap ($4000)
    it is also clumsy to use, slow, and has a number of bugs of which IBM
    won't acknowledge or fix.  Also support is poor and PROFS Extended Mail
    group does talk with the PROFS group.  To get this to work you also
    really have to install MAILER and configure PROFS Extended Mail to handle
    RFC822 format mail.  When in use you then can't just type domain-style
    addresses where you would think you should be able to type them - like
    on the Send to lines; instead, you have to type VERIFY there and enter
    the real addresses on an Address Resolution Screen that comes up after
    you press the send key.  I suppose one can get use to this, but why?
    In addition, there are a number of minor bugs like:
    a.) the 1st line of each message is stripped off.  Normally this is a
    part of the Received-By line so it doesn't matter, but it is annoying.
    Perhaps this is related to the mods that you have to put in OFSRDR just
    to get PROFS Ex. Mail to even read RFC822 mail!  By the way, the install
    guide says you might have to do this, but never tells you how!
    b.) when you file a note in one of your notelogs the sender is always
    recorded as your tranport agent -  MAILER or SMTP.  I have a mod that
    almost fixes this - so the sender now looks like "Barry Ha--away".  To
    fix this completely you need a small mod to PROFS - e.g. parse the from
    field as one 18-character field, instead of 2 8-character fields, but
    alas, PROFS is OCO - and since the two groups don't talk they won't do
    this.  Another example of broken by design.
    c.) Acknowledgements don't work.
    d.) Poor nickname support.

3.) install PUMP from University of Victoria on top of PROFS.  This package
    basically consists of PROFS exits (EPRERELN, EPRENOTE, OPENMAIL, etc.)
    that handle conversions PROFS<-->RFC822.  Domain-style address cannot be
    entered when sending PROFS notes, but instead must be entered in you NAMES
    file which are then resolved using the exits.  I have never used this, but
    I hear a number of good things about PUMP.

4.) Write your own version of PROFS mods.

I hope this helps.  If you have any further questions, please contact me
directly at the address below.


Barry Hathaway
General Electric Corporate Research and Development
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