Hypermail
Version: (alpha version)
A few words from Daniel Stenberg <Daniel.Stenberg@sth.frontec.se>:
=================================================================
This is a branched version of hypermail. I got a pre-version of the to-
become beta4 dated the 13th of October 1998. I modified it a great deal and
released a series of beta releases until Kent showed up again after a period
of absence in December 1998. He did not approve of all my changes and he
claimed to have a version much modified since the 13th-October version I had.
After a few months of more silence, I took up my work again and continued,
now releasing the versions labelled 2a<number> as long as they remain unstable
and somewhat "unauthorized" by Kent, the project maintainer the last time we
heard from him.
SINCE THIS IS BETA OR EVEN ALPHA SOFTWARE, DON'T EXPECT IT TO BE ROCK
SOLID. Expect it to malfunction and bug at places you least expect! ;-) Report
all bugs please!
Unfortunately, the docs are far from up-to-date...
Thanks to Ashley M. Kirchner <ashley@pcraft.com>, we have a CVS server with
the most recent sources at all times. Study the README.CVS file for details
in how to use it.
Get my hypermail stuff from www.fts.frontec.se/~dast/hypermail/
Now, back to the original README text:
==============================================================================
This is a beta release of the 2.0 version of hypermail. It is expected
that this will go through a beta period before being officially released
as Hypermail 2.0.
Please refer to Changelog for the list of changes made to this release.
Hypermail Background:
=====================
Hypermail was originally designed and developed by Tom Gruber for
Enterprise Integration Technologies (EIT) using Common Lisp.
It was later rewritten in C by Kevin Hughes in 1994 while Kevin
worked at EIT.
License Evolution:
------------------
In the spring of 1997, Kevin Hughes heavily pressed Hewlett-Packard
(who was now the legal owner of Hypermail, since EIT was bought by
VeriFone, which was bought by Hewlett-Packard) into placing a free
software license onto his old EIT software. They officially put the
GNU license on *all* of Kevin's old EIT software, opening it up to
more open methods of development and distribution. So now Hypermail
is under GNU.
EIT's net.disappearance:
------------------------
A very old and established government contractor company called
Electronic Instrumentation and Technology Inc. made legal moves to
obtain the eit.com domain. Since VeriFone/HP had no interest in keeping
EIT, dissolved it completely. As this company had a trademark on EIT,
the domain name was given to them. Elizabeth Batson of EIT/VeriFone/HP
informed Kevin he could maintain all his old software himself wherever
he wished to put it.
Kevin and ongoing Hypermail Development:
----------------------------------------
Kevin left Hewlett-Packard in 1997 and helped form a new company
called Veo Systems (www.veosystems.com) with his old boss Marty
Tenenbaum, who founded EIT. Kevin did not have the time to maintain
any of his old software, so he was looking for different parties to
help maintain it and take over different pieces. For instance, Getstats
has been obsoleted by Analog (http://www.statslab.cam.ac.uk/~sret1/analog/).
SWISH has been taken over by the SWISH-E project
(http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/SWISH-E/) and many people have been doing
good things with it. April 17, 1998 Kevin passed hypermail development
to Kent Landfield (http://www.landfield.com/hypermail/). Kent had been
supporting an enhanced version of hypermail he had been using for the
last few years.
General:
========
Hypermail 1.02 was the last supported version of hypermail until recently.
This is the start of its rebirth as a supported, publically available tool.
This version has been tested on the platforms listed below. If you would
like to send portability patches or confirmation that it works on a certain
platform, please do. There should not be toooo many changes that need to be
made.
This version of hypermail allows an administrator to customize the header
and footers to match their local needs. This allows you to have hypermail
facilities better integrated into your web site.
This version is an integration of patches that Kevin had received through
the years, and new features through the individual efforts many people.
This has been run through lint, Insight and Purify and has been cleaned up
accordingly. There are still some minor issues that will be cleaned up
shortly.
* archive - general archive utilites that are useful in managing
list archives. It is expected that some of the functionality
in msg2archive.c will find it's way into future versions of
hypermail,
* configs - sample hypermail configuration files,
* docs - documentation and documentation support files,
* libcgi - support library for the mail utility,
* src - here's the beef,
* tests - directory for supporting local testing,
Before Building Hypermail:
==========================
* Hypermail now uses "configure" to generate the Makefiles. In the
top level directory, type "configure" to create the Makefiles.
It is not quite right but it is close. If it does not work on your
system, please let me know.
* Additional utilities have been added to support maintaining hypermail
and Unix mailbox archives side-by-side. The tools can be very useful.
See the archive/README for additional information. It is expected that
the functionality of msg2archive.c will be merged into hypermail in
the future.
Building Hypermail:
===================
1) Edit the Makefile and make sure the "bindir", "mandir", "htmldir"
and "cgidir" paths for your system are correct. Also, verify you
have the permissions to write in these directories.
2) Type "make". This will build the software. You can test
it locally and when you are ready to install it ...
Testing Hypermail:
==================
If you wish to test the new hypermail before installing it
- chdir to tests/
- copy a mailbox you have to a local file named "testmail"
- type "testhm"
This will generate an archive under a newly created "testdir/"
directory. Check it out with your favorite browser.
When you are done testing,
- remove the testdir directory,
- remove the testmail file.
(See the README in tests/ for more information.)
Installing Hypermail:
=====================
Now that you are ready to install Hypermail,
- chdir to the src/directory
- Type "make install".
Building cgi-bin/mail:
======================
A small CGI program, "mail", is included with this source
for you to use with Hypermail. To compile and install it:
1) Edit the Makefile and change the variable "cgidir" to
point to the directory that holds your site's CGI programs.
2) Type "make mail" to compile the mail program.
3) Type "make mail.install" to install the program in your
CGI directory.
Documentation:
==============
To install the HTML documentation:
1) Edit the Makefile and change "htmldir" to point to the
directory in which you want the documentation.
2) Type "make html.install". You should be able to view the
HTML documentation using any World-Wide Web browser.
The latest, most up-to-date Hypermail documentation can be found at:
http://www.landfield.com/hypermail/
Supported Platforms:
====================
I have either compiled this code successfully on the following
platforms or others have told me of their success.
* Solaris 2.5.x
* SunOS 4.1.3
* FreeBSD 2.2.5
* BSDI/3.x
* Linux kernel 2.0.18 and 2.0.30
* Redhat 5.x
* NT using CygWin-b19 <http://www.cygnus.com/misc/gnu-win32>
If you have been able to compile Hypermail on different systems,
*PLEASE* let me know so I can list them here.
Warning:
========
Take the time to read the KNOWN_BUGS file so that you are aware of
things that might affect your use of hypermail.
Getting Help:
=============
Please send all bug reports, feature requests, patches, and other
program-related things to
hypermail-bugs@landfield.com.
The Hypermail Development mailing list (hypermail@landfield.com) is
a good place to ask questions about usage, potential bugs, or to talk
about features you'd like to see. The list is a majordomo-based list.
To subscribe send a message to majordomo@landfield.com with
"subscribe hypermail"
(minus the quotes) as the body of the message. The Subject: line
is ignored. The list's submission address is hypermail@landfield.com.
If you would simply like to be alerted to important Hypermail
announcements and don't wish to follow the development list's
traffic you can subscribe to the Hypermail Announcements list.
That is a very low traffic moderated list intended for announcements
only (concerning new releases or patches). This too is a majordomo
based list so to subscribe, send a message to majordomo@landfield.com
with
"subscribe hypermail-announce"
as the body of the message.
Additionally:
=============
You'll find the image "hypermail.gif" included with the source;
this icon is for your use in your Hypermail-related pages and links
to them. If you are talented with graphics and would like to donate
new icons and images to the hypermail effort, please feel free.
-- Kent Landfield
kent@landfield.com
10/07/98
