Subject: general information request

From: [email-masked] (Michael Fox)
Date: Wed, 2 Jun 93 23:58:07 EST

Not sure if this is the right place to send this query, but here goes:

We are currently migrating from a home-grown mail system on Primes on
to a standard unix mail environment, and Pine certainly looks to be the
ideal replacement.

Part of the exercise involves proving that the new system can do everything the old one could do, and this has meant a few minor patches to the code (3.07).
We now have to do some more tinkering, and I have seen a reference to version
4 beta in other correspondence.  Many of the enhancements we are looking for may well be in the new version - so is there such a version available and where 
can I get it from?

In particular, we are interested in integrating a news reading service, and
 perhaps replacing our current concept of 'notice boards' with news groups.

One use of our current notice board is as a mini bbs, to place software and
documents for downloading to a pc - any ideas on how to do this? the biggest
problem seems to be keeping track of what each user has read from a shared
folder, which I guess is what news groups would handle well.

The other feature we are looking for is some sort of directory service, to
enquire what a persons mail address is, or perhaps what are the valid
addresses in a functional work group.  Is anything being deveoped along these
lines?

By the way, this is not coming to you from within our version of Pine, because
we have only indirect access to the internet at the moment, and I have to go
through another site which only has standard mail.

Thanks,
Michael Fox

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From: Terry Gray <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 2 Jun 1993 11:37:22 -0700 (PDT)

> to a standard unix mail environment, and Pine certainly looks to be the

Glad to hear it!
 
> I have seen a reference to version 4 beta in other correspondence. 
> Many of the enhancements we are looking for may well be in the new version
> - so is there such a version available and where can I get it from? 

We are currently working on 3.83, which will be the first real release of
PC-Pine (coming R.S.N.).  A matching Unix Pine 3.83 will appear soon after
that.  You can think of 3.83 as a pre-release of 4.0, but there will be
more stuff added and fixed by the time 4.0 hits the street.  (Late
summer/early Fall???)

>  perhaps replacing our current concept of 'notice boards' with news groups.

News support will improve with each release.  The next version will allow
specification of one or more news collections, and display subscribed
newsgroups (according to your .newsrc) using the Folders screen.  Next
will come posting, subscription management, etc.
 
> folder, which I guess is what news groups would handle well.

Yes, a newsgroup is the easiest way of handling that right now if you 
want to keep track of which msgs each person has seen.  (Otherwise you
can arrange access to a read-only folder, where all msgs in the folder
will continually reappear.)

We've talked about defining the mailbox equivalent of a .newsrc for 
shared mailboxes, but haven't done anything about it yet.
 
> addresses in a functional work group.  Is anything being deveoped along these

Both of these are already on the list, but I can't say exactly when they 
will become available.

-teg

---

From: David L Miller <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 2 Jun 1993 11:55:34 -0700 (PDT)

>  perhaps replacing our current concept of 'notice boards' with news groups.
There is some support for newsreading in 3.07, it will be expanded in 4, 
along with remote folder management.

> folder, which I guess is what news groups would handle well.
The new version will include PC-Pine (MS-DOS).  It should not be too hard 
to integrate your notice board functionality...

> addresses in a functional work group.  Is anything being deveoped along these
Right now, the only method is to use addressbooks.  A more complete 
directory service is on the to-do list though...