Shawn wrote:
> 
> Very, very interesting Bob....   I've been after our e-mail admin to
> download the client for Linux.  Needless to say he hasn't.  Guess I'll
> have to bug him some more.  One less thing that I have to worry about
> using Winblows for...  Unfortunately, I lose about 60% functionality of
> Notes when using the webclient.

The low level of support for Notes on Unix is something really weird to
me.  My Dad is a programmer at IBM, and he's been running
RS6000/PowerPC/Power3 AIX workstations for a very long time (~10
years).  For the past few years, IBM has been trying to use Notes for
mail.  There have been a few Unix Notes clients, but they were only
half-hearted attempts.  Many programmers have a second box just for mail
and dealing with weird documents (ie Word, Excel, etc).  Some people use
a VNC-like program to connect to a remote NT box to do the same thing.

I have a sneaking suspicion that Notes clients for platforms other than
Win32 and OS/2 never had much effort put into them because the Notes
folks expected OS/2 to run on every architecture that was important to
IBM.  Don't quote me on that, though.  Of course, since Linux is
basically fulfilling OS/2's promise of running on a large number of
architectures, I think IBM should really consider making a good Notes
client for Unix, or perhaps contracting with the Ximian folks to include
Notes support in Evolution.


Anyway, let me explain how I set up my Linux box at work to run in a
Notes environment.  I have Sendmail running on my system, and I told the
Notes server to forward mail to `mike@[11.22.33.44]' (including the
square braces, since my computer doesn't have much for a hostname).  I
set up IPChains so that only the Notes server can talk to Sendmail. 
There are a few problems, of course.

When Notes mail gets converted into ASCII, it is the ugliest thing on
the planet -- especially if there is a long chain of replies.  I often
have to guess at the usernames of people I'm supposed to send mail to,
since there is no integration with the address books.  Also, people I
send mail to will often try to send a reply directly to me at my_box (the
`Sender:' in a mail header), rather than to my real e-mail address (who
the message is `From:').  This might be a bug in the Notes client, but
I'm not sure..  It would probably explain why I don't get a whole lot of
mail at work.

[wandering off-topic]

Note that confusion between the Sender and From addresses has caused
trouble for a long time.  I first ran into the problem about 4 years ago
when I was using Linux on a dial-up connection at home.  I hadn't yet
learned _not_ to always log in as root, so my outgoing e-mail had
`root at blarg.foo.com' as the Sender, though my e-mail address was
properly set in the From: line.  At some point, I tried to subscribe to
a mailing list, and ended up getting `root at foo.com' (the administrators
of my ISP) subscribed to the list.  Needless to say, they weren't too
pleased.

I'm also certain that mike at tc.umn.edu has gotten my mail before, since
the somewhat braindead (but damn fast) University mail servers would
take my `mike at blah.reshalls.umn.edu' Sender address and change it to
mike at tc.umn.edu, even though the From: line was set correctly.  I could
have fixed it by changing my login name to hick0088, but that would be
just silly, IMHO.

-- 
 _  _  _  _ _  ___    _ _  _  ___ _ _  __   How do you write zero in 
/ \/ \(_)| ' // ._\  / - \(_)/ ./| ' /(__   Roman Numerals? 
\_||_/|_||_|_\\___/  \_-_/|_|\__\|_|_\ __)                             
[ Mike Hicks | http://umn.edu/~hick0088/ | mailto:hick0088 at tc.umn.edu ]