Subject: Q: Why use pine (looking for justification) (fwd)

From: Terry Gray <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 28 Apr 1994 07:58:16 -0700 (PDT)

With Ken's permission, I'm re-directing this msg to the list for
comment... 

-teg

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 27 Apr 1994 22:09:09 -0400 (EDT)
From: Ken Brown <[email-masked]>
To: The Pine Team <[email-masked]>
Subject: Q: Why use pine (looking for justification)

Hello,

My department (CTS) takes care of mail at Trent University.  The mail hub 
is VMS host running PMDF and most our accounts are on this host.  We also 
support UNIX (Ultrix).  I take care of UNIX, NetWare and Pathworks.  For 
mailers we use VMS Mail on VMS hosts, Elm (sorry) and Pine on UNIX 
hosts,  Pathworks Mail on PC-Pathworks workstations and there is very 
limited use of Pegasus Mail for NetWare clients.  Ergo, we're faced with 
the problems outlined in the document describing imap vs. pop - and CTS 
would like to provide a reliable and manageable solution for VMS, UNIX, 
PC and MAC users.

Having read the docs and just installed PC Pine (of course imapd on UNIX) 
I'm of the opinion that imap clients are the way to go...

So, may question really is; can you folks point me to other institutions 
you might be aware of who have gone this route?  For example, are there 
sites where PC Pine has been selected over Pegasus Mail...I'd like to get 
their reasons.  Some of our faculty are impressed with Pegasus largely 
because it is the first mailer they've seen running on a DOS box - and 
they compare it to VMS Mail (all that colour is impressive :-) ).  But 
they are unaware of the need for gateways (Charon/Mercury), the problem 
of managing them and, importantly, the difficulties one can encounter 
when attachements are made to mail by various methods rather than by a 
standard.  I could go on, but I'm sure the scenario is one you've seen 
many times...

Perhaps you are aware of some papers on the matter?

Thanks...I look forward to your response.

Ken Brown                                   internet: [email-masked]
Trent University Computing & Telecommunications  tel: (705)748-1540
Peterborough, Ontario, Canada, K9J 7B8           fax: (705)748-1635

---

From: "Darryl Friesen (4758)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 29 Apr 1994 08:50:46 -0600 (CST)

> Ergo, we're faced with 

My suspicion is that this is a problem faced by all (educational)
institutions with user bases on a variety of different platforms.

> I'm of the opinion that imap clients are the way to go...

That's the decision we made.  Computing Services here at the UofS
spawned a small commitee to look into e-mail solutions.  They released
a report a few weeks ago, which I beleive is on our gopher server and
available to poeple outside the UofS (I can't say for certain though).
The short version is that imap is good, and Pine is good, and if you
can't use Pine, use another imap client.  Here's their recomendations
on a platform basis:

	Macintosh:		Mailstrom
	DOS:			PC-Pine
	Windows:		ECS-Mail
	Unix chatacter cell:	Pine
	VMS character cell:	None (although this was before 
				PMDF came with VMS Pine)

I you want to have a look at the documents, which cover oather products
testes, selection criteria etc etc, try either our gopher server, 
gopher.usask.ca, in the Computing directory, or our web server,
http://www.usask.ca/ (there is a link here to the gopher server).

> Thanks...I look forward to your response.

Hope this helps
- Darryl

  ----------------------------------------------------------------------
   Darryl Friesen, Client Services              [email-masked]
   Department of Computing Services          University of Saskatchewan
     <A HREF="http://www.usask.ca/~friesend/">My AMAZING Web Page</A>
  ----------------------------------------------------------------------
  "You, you were talking 'bout the end of the world"  (U2)