Channel program: Loosely speaking, any program which enqueues or dequeues messages to or from PMDF's message queues.

Dequeue: The act of removing a mail message from PMDF's message queues.

Enqueue: The act of submitting for transmission a mail message to PMDF.

Envelope: The message's transport layer To: and From: addressing information is contained in the message envelope.

Master channel program: Any program which enqueues messages to PMDF's message queues.

MIME: See RFC 2045--2049.

MTA: Message transfer agent; e.g., PMDF.

RFC: Request For Comments; the Internet's method of publishing documents.

RFC 822: RFC 822, written by David Crocker, is the Internet standards document entitled Standard for the Format of ARPA Internet Text Messages. Messages in PMDF's message queues conform to this standard; i.e., RFC 822 is the format which PMDF uses internally.

RFC 1123: RFC 1123, edited by Robert Braden, is the Internet standards document entitled Internet Host Requirements --- Application and Support. PMDF adheres to the requirements put forth by this document.

RFCs 2045--2049: RFCs 2045--2049, commonly referred to as MIME, written by Nathaniel Borenstein and Ned Freed, are the Internet standards track documents describing the format of Internet message bodies. PMDF uses the specifications laid out in this document when forming multipart messages, encoded messages, etc. Note that RFCs 2045--2049 replaced RFCs 1521--1522 and 1431, previous drafts of MIME.

RFC 1566: RFC 1566, sometimes referred to as MADMAN, written by Steve Kille and Ned Freed, is the Internet standards track protocol entitled Mail Monitoring MIB. PMDF accumulates the necessary message traffic statistics needed for this MIB. The concept of "group" used in the MIB is identified with a PMDF channel. The PMDFgetChannelStats routine can be used to access the messages traffic statistics, referred to as channel statistics.

RFCs 1891--1894: RFCs 1891--1894, sometimes referred to as NOTARY, written by Keith Moore and Greg Vaudreuil, are the Internet standards track documents for the format and handling of notification messages.

Slave channel program: Any program which dequeues messages from PMDF's message queues.

UA: User agent; e.g., the VMS MAIL utility.