Speaking ex cathedra as the Postmaster of Apple Computer, I'd like to
echo what Bill Janssen said, and add that I am in process of working on
a standard for Macintosh file encapsulation for Internet messages, with
the first implementation being for the AppleLink/Internet gateway.
For those who do not know, AppleLink is Apple's corporate E-mail
system, where all employees, developers, dealers, and other people that
we want to talk to have accounts for E-mail, BBoard service, and
downloading files. There are about 40,000 accounts on the system. The
gateway does about four to six megabytes of traffic a day.
Files flow out of AppleLink in E-mail now, just not in any sensible
format (I just uuencode them and send them on their way, without fixing
the internal file format of AppleLink into one of our standard file
formats, like AppleSingle), and I am following this mailing list (and
its SMTP twin) with great interest. I haven't said much yet because I
haven't had a chance to study the details of what has been proposed,
but you can be sure that when I do, it will be with an implementor's
eye.
It is also the case that if this process takes too long, I will just do
something that works, because I am being pressed hard to implement the
capability for macintosh people to exchange files in Internet E-mail.
This isn't stated as a threat; simply a statement of the reality that I
have to live with.
Erik E. Fair apple!fair fair(_at_)apple(_dot_)com