Re: Integrating WWW with mail

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From: nholtz@civeng.carleton.ca (Neal Holtz)
Message-id: <9304131750.AA08120@zonker.cascade.carleton.ca>
Subject: Re: Integrating WWW with mail
To: www-talk@nxoc01.cern.ch
Date: Tue, 13 Apr 93 13:50:18 EDT
X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.3 PL11]

Francis Heylighen writes:
> ... It
> would be interesting if I read an interesting document that I could
> directly contact the author without leaving my WWW browser. 
> 
> One intuitive way to implement this would be that if I select the person's
> name (or email address) I would get a dialogue in which I can compose an
> email message. ...

This would be very nice.  Along those same lines, the Lynx stuff from the 
University of Kansas has the interesting concept of file "ownership".  A special
tag gives the email address of the owner of the file, and the hypertext
browsers allow you to send them mail.  This is really a subset of the idea
proposed above, but it might be useful to have that concept of ownership
without any explicit reference in the text.

> Of course, this implies that the appropriate email protocol (SMTP?) would
> be incorporated in HTTP. But that can remain hidden from the user. 

Couldn't the various browsers just use the existing mail delivery mechanisms
and programs?

-- 
Prof. Neal Holtz,  Dept. of Civil Eng.,  Carleton University,  Ottawa,  Canada
Internet: nholtz@civeng.carleton.ca  Ph: (613)788-2600x5797 Fax: (613)788-3951