From: wcs@anchor.ho.att.com (Bill Stewart)
Date: Wed, 18 Nov 92 19:16:30 PST
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: PGP to SMTP mailer
Message-ID: <9211190308.AA25694@anchor.ho.att.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text


Embedding SMTP support into a PGP mail reader is the wrong approach,
though the DOS world seems to be going bananas over mail APIs.
You gain a lot of flexibility by separating the Mail User Agent,
which handles user interface, file storage, encryption and other decoding, etc.
from the Mail Transfer Agent function, which lets you send/receive PGP
messages over whatever mail systems you have available.
That way you don't need to write one PGP program for SMTP, another for
uucp, another for Fido, etc.  

On the other hand, I'd be interested in seeing a PGP hook built into
Lotus Notes - does it have an open programming or file-transfer interface?
It seems to be multimedia netnews for the mundanes, and getting 
some flavor of Public-Key encryption out there could help spread the technology,
especially if Lotus were to license RSA support.

			Bill Stewart, somewhere in New Jersey.