While we are discussing this.....
Erik
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POPmail 2.2b1 is a new version of our Macintosh e-mail client
that supports SMTP/POP2/POP3/IMAP e-mail. An important new feature
of POPmail is it includes support for resolving URLs embedded in
e-mail messages. This makes e-mail messages seem like Internet-aware
hypertext, and certainly makes it easier to follow the URL references
to Internet resources in e-mail messages you receive.
With POPmail, you can select a URL in a message and ask POPmail to
open the URL. To fetch a item pointed at by a URL, POPmail calls the
appropriate helper application to resolve ftp (Anarchie), Gopher
(TurboGopher), http (MacWeb), and NetNews (NewsWatcher) URLs.
POPmail 2.2b1 is available via gopher and anonymous ftp from
boombox.micro.umn.edu.
<URL:GOPHER://boombox.micro.umn.edu:70/11/POPmail/macintosh>
<URL:FTP://boombox.micro.umn.edu//pub/POPmail/macintosh/>
Comments and Bugs to: <popmail(_at_)boombox(_dot_)micro(_dot_)umn(_dot_)edu>
Why Helper Applications?
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A working group of the IETF recently produced a document defining a
standard form for Uniform Resource Locators (URLs). Given a standard
way of pointing to resources in the Internet, it is natural to embed
these URLs inside a variety of documents (and even e-mail messages).
However, since people publish on the Internet with gopher, ftp, http,
and other servers, POPmail needs to have some way to access all these
kinds of servers. This problem (an e-mail package needs to know six
or seven protocols to resolve URLs) will only get worse as more new
services are deployed on the Internet.
Rather than trying to do everything in a single bloated application,
POPmail calls external helper applications to resolve URLs. The open
component architecture makes it easy to support more services as URLs
and applications that support them become available. It also gives you
more choice in what application you use for ftp, gopher, or www
access. As more developers support the getURL appleevents, we will
add way to set your preferences for which applications are used to
resolve URLs. Ultimately this sort of architecture allows developers
to concentrate on doing one thing really well and gives you more
choice in the tools that you use for Interent access.
- The POPmail Mongoose Team
University of Minnesota.
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