TKAPPS software package for file, mail, and news management.
Copyright (c) 1997 John Willem van Gulik
Please see the file COPYING for full copyright notification and license terms.


The TKAPPS package consists of the following applications :

vmail3		tcl/tk (vanilla) based fully featured mail and news reader
		(the REAL reason you want this package see README.vmail3)
vvac		program to handle turning vacation on/off
vedit		basic editor with HTML editing support and spell checking
fm		file manager that uses mailcap files for viewing
vprog		single pixel wide program launcher
vdb		interface for directory based databases (such as NUAD)
vbiff		mailbox monitor (supports local files as well as POP3 mailboxes)
vquery		directory query interface (currently supports NUAD on port 43)
		(will shortly support LDAP, whois, finger, ph)
vdir		directory NUAD update interface
		(will be extensively modified soon)

Portability
===========

This package has been built for maximum portability across all unix platforms.  At the time of its release to the INTERNET, it has already been in use for over 3 years by over 600 users on an internal network (non-Internet connected).

It currently runs under SunOS 4.1.x and SOLARIS 2.x, AIX 3.2.x and AIX 4.x, HP UX (not sure of the OS version) as well as Linux.  Other versions of unix should work as well as long as they have tcl7.5 and tk4.1 or better.  They might require a little tweaking in the TKAPPS/lib/config.tk file though to set the correct path names for required external binary programs.

On the Win95/WinNT side, I have tried it out under an earlier version and most of the applications (vedit and vmail3 in particular) ran on a 486 DX2/66 running Win 95.  For some of them such as vvac, there was not really any point ;^)  It was slow, but usable.  I never quite figured out how to launch vedit from within vmail3 however so it was somewhat limited.


External programs required by TKAPPS applications
=================================================

The applications require wish4.1 and tcl7.5 as a minimum.  I have never tried it under tcl7.4 and tk4.0.  It has been tested with the newest wish8.0a2 and tcl8.0a2 and it runs great.  If you have extensions, it will probably run as long as the underlying wish is 4.1 or better.


Required unix utility programs are as follows :

file creation		rm mv cp mkdir rmdir chmod chown touch
file utilities		cat tail head grep sort uniq wc file find du df
process management	ps kill
printing		pr lpstat lpc lpr
mail attachments	sh uudecode uuencode mmencode
other			vacation ispell

You will need Ispell version 3.x.  Later major revisions such as Ispell V4.0
may not work.  If you don't have it, that's OK, the only thing that will not
work will be the spell checking in vedit and vmail3.

The vacation, ispell, mmencode (in the metamail package), and uuencode/uudecode
programs can all be found on most of the complete Linux cdrom distributions.
Or you can try ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/linux for an online source.



Environment variables that are used
===================================

Variable	Default		Description
DOMAIN		(determined)	DNS domain name
SITE		internet	site name (should be and will default to "internet")

MAILSERVER	localhost	hostname to send SMTP mail to
MAILPORT	25		port number for the SMTP mail connection
NNTPSERVER	news.$DOMAIN	hostname to send/get NNTP news from
NNTPPORT	119		port number for the NNTP news connection
WHOSERVER	whois.$DOMAIN	hostname to send NUAD directory queries to
WHOPORT		43		port number for the NUAD whois connection

USER		(required)	current username
HOME		(required)	current home directory
FULLNAME	(no default)	user's full name (ie. John Q. Public)
OS		(determined)	OS name (SunOS, SOLARIS, AIX, Linux...)

PRINTER		(no default)	printer queue name
PRINTER_TYPE	postscript	type of output to produce
PFILTER		none		print filter type

TMPDIR		/tmp		default place for temporary files


Installation
============

0.	All the applications are expecting /usr/local/bin/wish and /usr/local/bin/tclsh to exist.  If you have tcl/tk installed in a different directory, all you need to do is to either edit the first line of all the files under TKAPPS/bin, or put a couple of links under /usr/local/bin that point to the wish and tclsh binaries.  As mentioned before, these should be tcl7.5/tk4.1 or better.

1.	Unpack the tar file under your home directory, /opt, /apps, or /usr/local.  Each program when it starts up will look for the TKAPPS directory in these directories, in that order.  You can manually specify where the distribution is located by setting the TKAPPS environment variable.  If you just want to test it out, it is sufficient to just unpack it under your home directory, cd into TKAPPS/bin and run the program that you want to try.  You may have to modify the config.tk file (see below) if you are running different flavour of unix.

2.	If you are not running one of the supported OSes, edit the file TKAPPS/lib/config.tk and hardcode any pathnames for external programs that are required.  If the programs will normally be found in the PATH, then you do not need to do anything.  If you run one of the programs after installing TKAPPS and it immediately prompts you for a path name, then it did NOT find it in the PATH.  At that point, you can either alter your path to include the directory that contains the program or edit the config.tk file.

4.	To install all the programs, just run the INSTALL script which puts links into /usr/local/bin for all the applications.  If you want it installed somewhere else, just modify the script.  If you just want to leave it in its own directory, then add the TKAPPS/bin directory to your PATH and set the TKAPPS environment variable to point to the TKAPPS directory (wherever it is).

5.	Please drop me an email letting me know any suggestions or comments you might have.  You should be able to reach me by using "Send a VMail Gripe to the author".  I would also be interested in hearing about any modifications you might make to the code and if it fits in with the plans I have for TKAPPS, I'll put it in.


John van Gulik, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
Home page: http://infoweb.magi.com/~jvgulik
Email to: jvgulik@magi.com

