Subject: Storage of address books

From: Philip Hazel <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 21 May 1993 13:48:44 +0100 (BST)

We are in the process of setting up a machine which is to act as a mail
server for a large population. Users will access their mail using IMAP or
POP, and Pine is an obvious candidate for the User Agent. 

However, there are users who will be wanting to access their mail from a
number of different places - e.g. from a University Department and from
home, and possibly from out of town from time to time. This of course will
all work fine, EXCEPT for the fact that Pine keeps its address book on the
client where you are running Pine.

Wouldn't it be nice if Pine were to keep the addressbook on the server
machine? Then it would always be available.

First thought says: "But that means modifying the IMAP protocol", but then
I thought "No, you could keep the address book in a folder file."  Is this
a silly idea? When Pine contacts a server to open {xxxx}INBOX it could
look for {xxxx}ADDRESSBOOK and read its contents over, strip off the fake
"message" header, and there you are. 

I haven't developed this idea much, because those that know more than I do
may be about to tell me why it can't be done. 

P.S. There's the .pinerc file as well...

--
Philip Hazel                   University Computing Service,
[email-masked]             New Museums Site, Cambridge CB2 3QG,
[email-masked]          England.  Phone: +44 223 334714

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From: Mark Crispin <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 22 May 1993 00:47:18 -0700 (PDT)

Thank you for your suggestion of storing the addressbook as a folder on the
server machine.  That is an excellent idea; in fact, it is one of the ideas we
are considering.