TITLE

     Universal Message System, Public Release

VERSION

     This is Release 10.9 of the UMS installation package.

AUTHOR

     This package contains software from many different authors.
     Take a look at the various documentation files for further
     information. The installation package was originally put
     together by Kai Bolay and has been updated for 10.9 by
     Oliver Knorr (E-Mail: olk@johann.nbg.sub.org).

DESCRIPTION

     The Universal Message System (short "UMS") is a system for
     managing all kinds of messages ('e-mail' and 'news') as
     universally and efficiently as possible.

     It uses its own, network-independent format, thus allowing the
     user, the 'newsreader' and tool-programs to read and treat
     messages from different networks in a unified way.

     Special programs called 'importers' and 'exporters' deal with
     the specific formats of all these networks. In this release
     importers/exporters are supplied for QWK, UUCP, FidoNet, Mausnet
     (German) and Z-Net (German) as well as for a proprietary format.

     UMS supports multiple users and manages individual access-rights
     for each user.

     UMS provides a common interface ("ums.library") for access to
     the message-base, which is used by all programs dealing with
     UMS.

     Developer-material for using UMS in Amiga-Oberon, ARexx, C and
     Modula-2 is included in this package.

     Also included:

      - all binaries and tools needed for the central data-base

      - two messagereaders for reading and writing news and mail.
        One very nice and intuitive one (needs MUI), and one "not-so-
        intuitive" one that works on every Amiga- or VT100-console.

      - many tools that are useful and/or intructive in how to use
        UMS and write other tools.

      - an  Installer ((c) Commodore-Amiga, Inc.) script to install
        UMS with any of the above networks in a simple setup (i.e.
        a "point" or "leaf-node").

NEW FEATURES

     About 20 of the included packages have been updated since 10.8
     and a couple of bugs in the installer script have been fixed.

     IMPORTANT: There are still a few updates and new packages that
     ========== did not make it into this release! Most important,
                the included Maus and Z-Netz drivers are *not* the
                current releases. You have to get and install these
                separately. Sorry for the inconvenience.

SPECIAL REQUIREMENTS

     AmigaOS >=V2.0, >=3 MB RAM, >=2 MB hd

     MUI (Magic User Interface, (c) by Stefan Stuntz) is needed
     if you want to use the IntuiNews messagereader.

HOST NAME

     Any AMINET mirror, for example ftp.uni-erlangen.de.

DIRECTORY

     /pub/aminet/comm/ums

FILE NAMES

     UMS109_1.lha   (Installation Disk 1, 625637 bytes)
     UMS109_2.lha   (Installation Disk 2, 700184 bytes)


DISTRIBUTABILITY

     Copyrighted, Freely Distributable, no fee