@(#) README 2.1 90/01/22 13:26:22

This is the second release of the pc-mail software that original-
ly appeared in comp.sources.misc, april 1988.

The pc-mail software provides a single user with  facilities  for
creating,  sending  and  receiving  electronic mail messages. The
programs were developed under UNIX  but  also  run  with  MS-DOS.
Various  transport  mechanisms are supported: UUCP across dial-up
links (both GNUUCP support as well as a dedicated UUCP driver are
provided),  and  PC/NFS.  Porting  to  other OSes should be rela-
tively easy.

In principle, the software can be operated  in  four  ways,  that
differ in the location of the user's mail data base, and  in  the
mechanism used for message transport:

 - The mail data base is local to the pc. The user does  all  her
work  on  the pc. Messages are exchanged with a UNIX host via the
UUCP file-transfer program provided with the pc-mail software.

 - Ditto, but GNUUCP is used for message transport  and  routing.
The  pc-mail source distribution provides programs that interface
between pc-mail and GNUUCP.

 - The mail data base is located on a UNIX file server. The  user
does all her work on the pc. Daemon programs, running on the UNIX
file server, take care of the actual delivery  of  messages.  The
daemon  programs  are part of the pc-mail source distribution and
interface with the sendmail program.

 - The mail data base is located on a UNIX host;  the  user  does
all  her  work on the UNIX host; daemon programs, also running on
the UNIX host, take care of the actual message delivery. Although
a bit bizarre, this mode is very useful for software development.

The programs support the sending and receiving of electronic mail
only;  no  transfer  of  files by name and no message routing. In
fact, the pc side treats  each  incoming  data  file  as  a  mail
message,  irrespective  of its actual destination. The reason for
these limitations are (besides uucp security problems)  that  all
files  can be sent as mail, and that a pc does not provide multi-
user support anyway.

For the non-technical user there is a menu-driven shell that  au-
tomatically  invokes  various utility programs, e.g. an editor of
the user's choice for editing or  creating  messages,  a  program
that logs in on a UNIX host to exchange files and so on. Any edi-
tor that produces clean ASCII files can be used  (wordstar  files
are  also  handled correctly). Other facilities: alias data base,
batch-mode operation, a reply command, selective  suppression  of
mail header lines, and message templates.

More technically oriented users will want to avoid  the  interac-
tive  shell  and  use  the  mail  data  base and utility programs
directly. The necessary information can be found in the implemen-
tation documentation. In addition, almost every source file has a
built-in  manual  page.  The  latter  can  be  extracted with the
srctoman.sh shell script which uses the detab.c program; both are
provided with the pc-mail source distribution.

The programs have been tested with various MS-DOS versions on  XT
and  AT  clones  (using  the  MicroSoft  V4.0  C  compiler), with
Microport System-V/AT, and with PC/NFS version  3.0.  The  daemon
programs were tested under Microport System-V/AT and SunOS 4.0.3.

In order to run the software under UNIX one needs a library  with
the  System-V library functions (strtok(), memcpy() et al.).  The
source provides BSD-compatible  libraries  for  directory  access
within the System-V and MS-DOS environments.

For the interactive shell,  a  tiny  MS-DOS  termcap  library  is
provided.  It requires the ANSI.SYS driver or better. 

You can do anything with the source, but not ask  money  for  it,
nor  remove  references  to  the  original  authors.  Complaints,
feedback and suggestions are welcome. Flames to /dev/null.

	Wietse Venema	domain:	wswietse@lso.win.tue.nl
			bitnet:	wswietse@heitue5
