Table of contents: Electronic Mail

Electronic mail is the mostly used application on wide-area computer networks, and more people can reach each other through electronic mail than through any other networked computer application.

The book Electronic Mail by Jacob Palme gives a comprehensive survey of the electronic mail area. Information is given about both technical and user aspects. There are sections on

• social effects of introducing electronic mail
• cost/benefit analysis
• functions and techniques
• distributed and client-server techniques
• standards, both the OSI (X.400) and the Internet mail standards, and a comparison between them
• the market for electronic mail
• ethical and legal aspects
• research on electronic mail

About the author

Jacob Palme is nontenured professor at Stockholm University and KTH, Department for Computer and Systems sciences, and is active in ISO and IETF standards work in the electronic mail area. He has been involved with the development of the KOM, PortaCOM, SuperKOM and Web4Groups electronic mail and groupware systems and has written several textbooks in the computer area as well as five crime novels.

Publisher

The book "Electronic Mail" was published in1995 by
Artech House, 685 Canton Street, Norwood, Ma 02062-2610, U.S.A.
Artech House, Portland House, Stag Place, London SW1E 5XA, United Kingdom.

Updates with news since 1995 is available on the web.

Table of Contents

Preface vii

Chapter 1 Introduction 1

Chapter 2 Electronic Mail and Other Media 3

Chapter 3 When Is Electronic Mail Successful? 7

Chapter 4 Value for People and Organizations 9
4.1 New Communication or Old Communication In a New Medium? 9
4.2 Changes to Organizations 10
4.3 Will Electronic Mail Improve Companies? 11
4.4 Exchange of Experience Using Electronic Mail 12
4.5 The Changing Roles of Supervisors and Managers 12
4.6 Group Size and the Critical-Mass Hypothesis 14
4.7 Examples of Observed Effects of E-Mail/CMC 15
4.8 Coordination and Decision-Making 15

Chapter 5 Cost/efficiency Analysis 19
5.1 How Cost/Efficiency Analysis can be Used 19
5.2 Can the Productivity of Office Work Increase? 19
5.3 Comparison with telephone Calls 22
5.4 Comparison with Postal Mail, Post-it Notes, Telex and FAX 24
5.5 Comparison with Face-to-Face Meetings 25
5.6 Comparison with Audio and Video Conferencing and Voice Mail Systems 30
5.7 When is Electronic Mail the Best Medium? 30
5.8 The Value of Changed Communication Patterns 32

Chapter 6 User Functionality with Electronic Mail 35
6.1 Personally Addressed Mail 35
6.2 Automatic Mail 36
6.3 Simultaneous text Communication 37
6.4 Multimedia Documents and Voice Mail 37
6.5 Office Documents (EDI), Forms, Work Flow Applications 38
6.6 Folders and Archives 41
6.7 Group Communication 42
6.8 Filters 48
6.9 Anonymity and Pseudonymity 49
6.10 Mail Servers 50
6.11 Directories 51
6.12 Coworking with other Media 52
6.13 Reliability and Security 53
6.14 Roles 56

Chapter 7 Techniques for Electronic Mail 59
7.1 Transmission of Messages (Routing) 59
7.2 Naming and Addressing 63
7.3 Architecture of Electronic Mail Systems 71
7.4 Distribution Lists 72
7.5 Computer Conferencing and Bulletin Board Systems 75
7.6 Cryptographic Security echniques 76

Chapter 8 Standards 83
8.1 Standards in General 83
8.2 Text Formats 84
8.4 X.400/MHS-- he OSI STandard for Electronic Mail 98
8.5 X.500--The OSI Standard for Directory Systems 126
8.6 Internet Mail Standards 129
8.7 Bitnet Format 149
8.8 UUCP format and Usenet News 151
8.9 VMSmail 152
8.10 Application Programming Interfaces 152
8.11 Gatewaying Standards 154
8.12 Deviations between Standards and Reality 157
8.13 Functional Standards and Implementors' Guide 159
8.14 PICS Proforma 160

Chapter 9 The Market for Electronic Mail 163
9.1 History 164
9.2 Software 165
9.3 Public Services 169
9.4 Public Messaging Systems and Conference Systems 174
9.5 Fees and Charging 175

Chapter 10 Law and Order 177
10.1 Ethics and Etiquette 177
10.2 Human Rights Issues 184
10.3 Freedom of Information Acts 184
10.4 Printed Matter 184
10.5 Computers and Privacy Legislation 185
10.6 Copyright Laws 187
10.7 Unlawful Communication 187
10.8 Agreements and Signatures 188
10.9 Legal Recipients 189
10.10 Which Law is Applicable 190
10.11 Who is Legally Responsible 190
10.12 Law EnforcementActions 190

Chapter 11 Research about Electronic Mail 193

Chapter 12 User Interface Examples 197
12.1 Examples from the User Interface of Pine 197
12.2 Examples from the User Interface of SuperKOM 199
12.3 Examples from the Line-Oriented User Interface of EAN/Envoy 400 202
12.4 Examples from the User Interface of Memo 205
12.5 Examples from the First Class User Interface 208

Appendix A: Postal Addresses of E-Mail Organizations 211

Appendix B: Standards Documents 213
B.1 ISO and ITU Standards 213
B.2 Internet Documents (A Selection) 215

Further Reading 219

Glossary 221

Index 243

About the Author 267

Back to the Home Page for the book "Electronic Mail"

Last update: 24 April 1997 by Jacob Palme E-mail: jpalme@dsv.su.se.