- From: William F. Hammond <hammond@csc.albany.edu>
- Date: Thu, 1 Feb 2001 21:31:15 -0500 (EST)
- To: reinpost@win.tue.nl
- Cc: www-talk@w3.org
Reinier Post <reinpost@win.tue.nl> writes:
> > there is no public cross-platform protocol for getting independently
> > written mailers and browsers to talk together, and that would be a
> > good thing to have.
>
> Well, SMTP and POP/IMAP are just that, but they do depend on the idea
> of a user account having a mailbox, and SMTP lacks authentication.
Those are network protocols. I was speaking of a browser and a mailer
running at the same time on the same platform and owned by the same
user. There is no way public way, implementable on all platforms, to
have that browser and that mailer talk to each other about their
common interests. This was, more or less, the context of the posting
that started this thread. IMHO it's not a great thing to have a
unified beast that does anonymous ftp and http also doing smtp or pop
or imap and not even a good thing when it imprisons a mail sending
user in a lame editor although I don't object if it is understood that
these are just default services for users who don't care to use more
refined tools. The means to integrate other independently written
tools needs to be there. Wasn't there discussion about this at
NCSA in the autumn days of Mosaic?
-- Bill
Received on Thursday, 1 February 2001 21:31:40 UTC