Appendix G - GroupMail and MacWoof

MacWoof now supports GroupMail as described in the FTSC-0008 standards documentation and has been tested with the GMail group mail processor for MSDOS. GroupMail offers a number of advantages over conventional EchoMail. With GroupMail, a conference can be fully moderated if desired with all messages being read and retransmitted by the echo moderator. More importantly in the context of MacWoof and point systems, use of GroupMail by the Boss node can lead to significant savings in disk space when a lot of points are taking the same high volume echoes.

With GroupMail, only one copy of any message in the GroupMailed echo is kept. Systems, points or nodes, "down stream" of the Boss make file update requests for each GroupMail echo they participate in asking for all received messages since their last call. The mailer program then sends them any newly received mail bundles. The calling software then unARCs them as per usual and imports the packets.

MacWoof is now capable of generating the necessary file request updates and unARCing the received mail bundles as used in GroupMail. You can designate an area as a GroupMail echo either when you initially create it or via the Area Info dialog.

Note: You do have to setup GroupMail echoes manually so that the initial file request for the area will be generated. 

Note: If your Boss is using Tabby, do not set the GroupMail checkbox as what Tabby refers to as GroupMail/PointMail does not follow the GroupMail standard.