mapping files to objects

[Kelly Murray]

I'm really starting to feel like I'm just repeating myself over
and over, so I'll probably stop saying anything, since it doesn't
seem to be getting across.

A Lisp mail system won't need to read any files.
What "something is" is determined by what that something IS.

If you replace SMTP/sendmail with a Lisp program, you'll never
in your life see a "file" again, let alone one in /var/spool/mail
or ~user/Mail.  OK, so someone sends you mail message with a image
in it.  The Lisp mail program processes the mail message, and
creates a composite mail message having a list of two components,
a #<text-message> and a #<gif>.
So you want to compress the gif?  (compress #<gif>) => #<compressed-gif>
There is no foo.gif.gz file, it's a 'compressed-gif' object.

If you want to write a Unix mail system in Lisp, then go ahead
and write a UNIX mail system in Lisp,
but that is not a Lisp mail system.

-kelly