Telecomming 3650 to a BBS

[barmar@Think.COM (Barry Margolin)]

   Date: Tue, 22 Oct 91 12:05 PDT
   From: Scott_Busse%mindlink.bc.ca@Warbucks.AI.SRI.COM (Scott Busse)

     So what I need to know is if ZMail (or ?) is capable of general
   real-time interaction with an interface of arbitrary requirements,
   over a serial port and 2400 baud modem. Any insight is greatly
   appreciated.

It might be possible, but if so it would be extremely difficult.  Zmail's
mail access routines are designed on the assumption that they are using an
ordinary, general purpose file access protocol, and that mail is stored in
ordinary files.  It's all flavor-based, so it might be possible to bypass
the file access protocols, but you'd have to write an awful lot of code to
implement a completely undocumented protocol (and if you don't have the
optional sources, you can't even look at the normal code).  Mostly, the
flavors are used to customize the locations of inbox files and mail file
formats for different systems, but normal I/O routines are used for the
actual accesses.

This design is unfortunate, in my opinion.  There are now some popular
"post office" network protocols, but Zmail is unable to make use of them,
nor can it work over an ad hoc user interface channel such as you wish to
use.