Article 163704 of comp.os.vms: 24-JAN-1997 PINE 3.91 beta 11 A new beta of PINE for VMS is available (PINE 3.91 BETA 11) which contains a number of new things and changes to improve stability/reduce bugs. Details 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. There's also talk of adding IMAP to NETSCAPE mail and perhaps EUDORA. It IS an internet 'standard' (RFC1176 and RFC1740) 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_11.zip (ZIP format) Please note that executables are NOT included due to the wide variety of combinations of system out there (system level, vax/alpha, network stack etc.). You will therefore need a C compiler (GNU C 2.7.1 is known to compile it). 3.91 BETA 11 - CHANGES SINCE 3.91 BETA 10 ----------------------------------------- Summary of new features in this release ======================================= * IMAP CREATE of an empty mailbox now works. * IMAP APPEND to a mailbox now works correctly; with the limitation that the flags settings are not actioned. This allows messages to be copied between different systems. * IMAP SUBSCRIBE/UNSUBSCRIBE mailbox commands are now fully implemented and maintain a mailbox subscription file which the FIND MAILBOXES command interrogates. * Message flags (SEEN, ANSWERED, FLAGGED) are remembered across sessions as they are stored in the mailfile with each message. In particular, SEEN is no longer set based on whether or not it's in the INBOX folder. * Full mailbox names are now properly supported (I.E. --- ~/... format) * Wildcard patterns are now supported on IMAP 'FIND' commands. Wildcard characters are '*' (match any string), '%' and '?' (both match any single character). * PINE's FCC (File Carbon Copy) option and the postponed messages option are implemented. * Improved caching of messages; access to messages is significantly faster now. * Significantly less memory used to access messages. * New logical names: IMAPD_INBOXFOLDERNAME Defines an alternative to "NEWMAIL" for the name of the INBOX folder. IMAPD_AUTOFILEINBOX If defined, seen messages in the INBOX are automatically filed (moved) to the folder named by this logical when the mailbox is closed. Leave undefined for compatibility with previous releases or with standard PINE/IMAPD functionality; define to "MAIL" for compatibility with VMS MAIL. IMAPD_MAILPROTOTYPE Defined to a dummy mail file so that the CREATE function can 'borrow' its FDL description for the new file. Accessed if the user's own default mail file cannot be used. If neither can be accessed, the CREATE function will fail. * Support for CMU in the SERVICE_SETUP.COM procedure. * Many internal debugging and tracing facilities now incorporated into the VMS MAIL driver. At log levels above 20, these write detailed info to the logfile and also to the application's debug output). Note, use of this MAY generate invalid IMAP output so it is not advisable to set the debugging globally. Modules MUST be built with the LOGTRACE option otherwise the debug output is ineffective. For the network module, the option NETTRACE must be used. * Additional keywords recognized as the start of RFC822 headers in the VMS MAIL message. Summary of changes that may affect configurations ================================================= * Prior to this release, FCC and postponement of messages did not work. This turned out to be because of the complexities of folder creation and validity checking. Now that this has all been fixed up, FCC and postponed messages work correctly. If these have been defined as recommended in versions B10 and earlier, the configuration may now be changed to specify any arbitrary folder(s). * Previously the IMAP FIND commands would ignore the wildcard mailbox pattern and just list all folders in the default mail file. Now, this pattern is not ignored and only matching folders are listed. Any client using the IMAP server should be checked to make sure that it specifies the appropriate wildcard mailbox format, otherwise a different set of mail folders may be displayed from before: FIND MAILBOXES pattern Examines the contents of the mailbox subscription file, maintained by the SUBSCRIBE MAILBOX and UNSUBSCRIBE MAILBOX commands. NOTE that INBOX is always listed. FIND ALL.MAILBOXES pattern Lists the folders contained in the specified mail.mai file. The above may alter the list of folders which PINE displays by default. Summary of major bugs fixed in this release =========================================== * PINE can now open multiple mailboxes (EG INBOX and the currently selected folder) without clashing in their use of global variables. * The IMAP SEARCH function now works properly. * Handling of updates to new mail count now more reliable. * IMAP MOVE/COPY function no longer returns inverted status * Crash dumps now get copied to SYS$LOGIN:.PINE-CRASH * PINE now works in a subprocess. Previously it would hang.