Article 122625 of comp.os.vms: A new beta of PINE for VMS is available (PINE 3.91 BETA 12) which contains a number of new things and changes to improve stability/reduce bugs. Details and location are enclosed below for those interested. Regards, Andy Harper Kings College London What is PINE ? -------------- Pine is a program that runs on a number of different platforms to provide a screen based mail and news reading facility. It originates at the University of Washington. Mail folders on remote systems can be read as easily as local mail folders, using standard POP and IMAP protocols. What is IMAP ? -------------- Several people asked 'what is IMAP' after an earlier message went around. Well it's a protocol that allows a client to access mailboxes on a server. It differs from the POP protocol in a number of key areas: * POP only accesses the NEWMAIL folder; IMAP can access any folder * POP downloads messages to the client; IMAP keeps them on the server (in either case, messages can be downloaded or left on the server if you wish but access to such messages with POP becomes tricky). POP is not good for people who move from PC to PC, whereas IMAP handles this neatly. * POP can only read a mailbox and delete items from it; IMAP can additionally search, create, and store. This allows suitable clients to move messages between folders on different systems. What Mail clients use IMAP? --------------------------- Most of the clients around still use POP (Eudora, pegasus, netscape mail etc.) but a number are starting to incorporate IMAP access to. The commercial one we use is called Simeon by ESYS Corporation (this is not a recommendation and I have no connection with the company!) and there is a freeware one called ATISMAIL around. NETSCAPE 4 now supports the IMAP protocol (though it is still a little buggy) and rumours of its presence in EUDORA abound. IMAP IS an internet 'standard' (RFC1176 and RFC1740 and others) and is therefore likely to become more prevalent over time. What about this IMAP server? ---------------------------- We had a need for a functional IMAP server on our VMS systems, and a number of others seemed to be interested too, so I set about finding one. One such is the IMAPD server included with the PINE software from Univ. of Washington, which was ported to VMS by Yehavi Bourvine (based on the one included in the PINE 3.91 kit from U of Washington). This was known as 3.91 beta 5 for VMS. I've updated Yehavi's port with some additional bug fixes and features. Although there are later releases of pine (3.95 is current I believe) there are no working VMS ports (though 3.95 does include a partial port which is grossly incomplete). My improvements to 3.91 are primarily: * Fixing some problems with PINE sending mail out * Completing the port of the IMAPD server * Fully supporting the NETLIB TCP/IP interface * Adding a few new features, such as logging and decnet address mapping * Supporting builds with DEC C 5.3, GNU C 2.7.1 and VAXC 3.2, on both VAX and ALPHA AVAILABILITY: ------------- FTP: ftp://ftp2.kcl.ac.uk/zip/pine_3_91_beta_12.zip (ZIP format) Summary of new features in this release ======================================= * Support for sending mail via MULTINET SMTP and via the freeware package VMS-SENDMAIL. * Support for RFC822 headers at the end of the text body, via the new logical name "CCLIENT_HEADERS_ATEND". * Support for TCPWARE in the SERVICE_SETUP.COM procedure. * Support for RFC1405 local format addresses, when DECnet addressare mapped to internet format. * New IPOP3D_SETUP.COM procedure to define logical names for the IPOP3 server. * New CCLIENT_SETUP.COM module to define logical names that control the C-CLIENT operation. * New VMSBUILD option (NOTCP) to specifically select NO TCP support * New VMSBUILD option (COMPILE-ONLY) to specifically select compilation only (no link phase). Link may be done separately with LINK-ONLY option * New logical name CCLIENT_MAILFILE_PURGE_RECLAIM; if defined, each mailbox close operation will perform a purge of the WASTEBASKET folder and a reclaim of deleted messages/bytes. * Additional RFC822 headers recognized * Where VMS MAIL headers are rewritten, continuation lines are inserted if necessary for long lines. * Separate directories for VAX and ALPHA objects and executables during the build. Building for VAX no longer destroys the objects/executables for ALPHA, and vice versa. Summary of changes that may affect configurations ================================================= * INSTALL.COM has been modified to expect new logical names IPOP3D_DIR and IPOP3D_DIR. The IPOP3D executable is now copied to this location rather than to IMAPD_DIR. Implications: * Check that the IPOP3 logicals are defined before running INSTALL.COM to update the system. * A FIND ALL.MAILBOXES command no longer displays the true folder name to which the INBOX name maps. This is to prevent clients from displaying the same folder under two different names. Implications: * Check the .MAILBOXLIST file for all users and remove any reference to the real name of the INBOX folder (which is NEWMAIL unless redefined via the logical name CCLIENT_INBOXFOLDERNAME). * A mailbox close does not now perform an automatic purge/reclaim on the mailfile. Define the new logical name CCLIENT_MAILFILE_PURGE_RECLAIM (any value) to restore this behaviour. * A number of the IMAPD_xxx logical names which were not exclusive to the IMAPD daemon have been renamed to CCLIENT_xxx to more accurately reflect the fact that they affect anything using the C-client library. Implications: * Check configuration logical names and convert to the new names * Check IMAPD_SETUP.COM and (new) CCLIENT_SETUP.com procedures * Ensure CCLIENT_SETUP.COM is called at system startup * DECNET Addresses are now mapped according to the RFC1405 standard and an optional DECnet-to-SMTP relay address may be included. A new logical name "CCLIENT_GW_MAIL11" optionally defines this relay. The new logical name "CCLIENT_NORFC1405" can be used to restore previous behaviour. Implications: * Ensure that the new address syntax is correct for your SMTP server. if not, consider using the old syntax or defining the CCLIENT_NODE_xxx logicals to perform mapping. * Due to PINE (and VMS MAIL) being picky about the case of folder names, the case-insensitivity of folder names has been removed. Folder names ARE now case-sensitive. The special name INBOX remains case insensitive. Implications: * Check that subscribed folder names in the .MAILBOXLIST file for each user match the case of the folder name in the corresponding mail.mai file. Any that do not should be converted by manually editing the .MAILBOXLIST file. Summary of major bugs fixed in this release =========================================== * The potential for ACCVIO's during PINE startup has been reduced. * Spaces around VMS MAIL addresses are now stripped off before rewriting them into RFC format. Separators between addresses are also properly handled. * Rewriting of non-SMTP addresses better handles the various formats found in VMS MAIL. * The append routine no longer aborts when a NULL flags specification is passed. * Creation of a mailbox in a non-existent subdirectory now properly creates the subdirectory first. * Use of an empty mailbox no longer causes an IMAPD or PINE crash when the mailbox is pinged. Instead, it correctly returns zero messages. * When setting new mail count, make sure we don't go negative to avoid large newmail counts caused by wraparound. * Address rewriting of some DECnet addresses no longer aborts when compiled with VAX C or GNU C. Full details of each change are enclosed in the AAAREADME.TXT contained with the package.