ZConnect is a minutes standard to the data exchange of E-Mail and reports in public forums. It was defined since 1992 as alternative to existing standards, in order to facilitate the production of software for these applications.

Development process

The origin of the data format lies in the range of the Z-net and represents a development the Zerberus GmbH (Bielefeld) from the year 1992, which was explained as the license-free usable standard and developed further in the context of the open ZConnect committee until 1995 by a democratic process.

The ZConnect committee consisted of developers, users and coworkers the Zerberus GmbH. The presentation as well as the execution of the tuning were taken over thereby by an external, thus not the committee person belonging. The committee was to that extent open thereby for everyone, since the members could decide the admission of a further member at any time.

Five elections were accomplished and ended in the version 3.1, which represented the end of the development of ZConnect at the same time.

Motivation

Of the Zerberus GmbH developed and refugee mailbox program Zerberus used up to the version 4 message formats and data exchange minutes. This Zerberus 4 de-facto-standards by a whole number of other products and likewise did not exist a not insignificant number of such mailbox systems was supported.

The de-facto-standards were however in mehrerlei regard insufficient. For example the lengths of different data, like E-Mail addresses and lines for reference text, were limited. Addresses could not contain fully qualified Domains. The interaction was well compressed, but with a large data set also unstably.

In the Zerberus community the existence of international standards was quite well-known for these purposes. Experiences, which one had made already with the attempt to develop gateways between Zerberus nets and UUCP systems, led however to the generally spread opinion that these standards were in itself contradictory, chaotic and complicated. They gave besides strong consideration to restrictions of computer systems, which were at this time long e.g. maximum line lengths of 80 indications or the restriction on seven usable bits for each byte.

Before this background the development of completely new, independent standards appeared simpler to convert than existing minutes. The developers had the goal to carry out the applications concerned with ZConnect better than with the RFC standards.

Contents

The ZConnect standard covers the standardisation of the data format for public and private reports and a definition of minutes for data exchange between computers over modem or similar asynchronous lines.

ZConnect represented an alternative to different existing standards, which were already internationally established however all:

• E-Mail format: RFC 822
• Public reports, Usenet News-format: RFC 1036
• Unix ton of Unix CoPy (UUCP) for transmission of news between computers over modem

Spreading

Already before the completion of the version 3.1 of the standard Zerberus 5, which tried, to convert him completely, appeared. In the consequence implemented a number of further authors the standard in their software, whereby however nearly always without the conversion again as one complicated and a little favourably regarded data exchange minutes one did and only the message formats were implemented. The data communication was based further on the Zerberus 4 de-facto-standard. These mix Janus, later with easy improvements Janus+, one called.

After ZConnect was some time used and more and more software for ZConnect became available, it appeared that ZConnect was not completely defined also in the last version 3.1. Differences in the implementations and doubts during the interpretation led to and thus to technical problems.

When the Zerberus based nets construct ever more gateway in the UUCP and/or Internet world, it turned out that these gateways had now the problem of the translation between the formats, which for lack of exact definitions on both sides a nearly unsolvable problem became. The result message losses were and - falsifications.

Since the standard was not developed further, lost opposite ZConnect the standards of the ever faster spreading Internet fast at meaning. Today natural functions like an attaching of files at enamels are not no more supported by ZConnect already.

Pro and cons of ZConnect in relation to the Internet standards

Advantages

• In the comparison to the RFC range clearer header definition
• Implementation more simply than attention of partly contradicting RFCs
• no restrictions of size regarding number of headers and header and Body size
• Flexibly regarding additional headers and as Meta Tunneling format for Mail and news
• Gateways take over umlaut and format transformations
• a data format for E-Mail and Usenet news

Disadvantages

• a data format for E-Mail and Usenet news
• no bijektive illustration of the RFC Mailheader "“CC/BCC"” defines
• Load of the translation/interpretation "“more carelessly"” RFC messages is with gateways
• no Erweitung toward MIME multi-part
• no clear definition for non--European umlaut coding
• Active advancement on the part of the ZConnect committee approx. 1998 adjusted.

Programs

Programs, which implemented ZConnect as data exchange format (alphabetical list):

POINT programs for final users

• Charon (Windows)
• CROSS POINT (DOS)
• FreeXP (DOS)
• MicroDot (Amiga)
• MyBBS (Amiga)
• OpenXP (FreeBSD, Linux, Windows, DOS)
• TheAnswer 2 (Amiga)
• The_Dot (Atari)
• XP2 (DOS)

Mailbox programs

• AmBoS (for Amiga)
• Anubis (for Amiga)
• ConnectLine (for Amiga)
• DBOX BBS (for Linux)
• DinoEx (for POSIX)
• Nearly call (for Amiga)
• NCB Mail (for DOS, Windows)
• Prometheus (for Amiga)
• Zerberus (DOS)

Gateway

• DUUCP (Usenet Mail/ZConnect gateway)
• Fidozerb (Fidonet/Zconnect gateway)
• Unix Connect (Usenet Mail/ZConnect gateway)
• UUCPfZ (Usenet Mail/ZConnect gateway]

Related links

• ZConnect documentation v3.1 (ISBN 3-9802182-3-6)
• Snoopies ZConnect side
• Documentation to Z-Connect
• NCBMail
• padeluun over the advantages of Zconnect
• ZConnect standard under public license

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