WordPerfect Corp became the latest company to sign up as a trustee of the Vendor Independent Messaging Interface specification last week. VIM was developed and supported originally by Apple Computer Inc, Borland International Inc, Lotus Development Corp and Novell Inc. The latest arrival says that both WordPerfect and WordPerfect Office will support the interface. Meanwhile, it appears that the X400 API Association’s attempts to smooth out the differences between VIM and Microsoft Corp’s MAPI interface is moving along nicely. When it comes to a simple send programming interface, XAPIA chairman Ed Owens says that the Association should have something substantial to show by this October. The committee announced at the US Electronic Mail Association meeting last week that it will now begin working on ‘simple fetch’ and ‘simple lookup’ functions, the latter being a call that would convert a user-friendly nickname into a formal electronic mail address. Owens thinks it likely that both Microsoft and the VIM group will support these basic applications programming interfaces, which would solve around 50% of the problems inherent in building mail-enabled applications.
