The Mail Archive Converter would be used to gather mail and news archive files from a variety of sources and process them into HTML pages multiply indexed and linked by date, subject, and author. Once the HTML pages and indexes were created, they would be sent to one or more web servers, where they would be accessible on the web.
The format of the mail and news archive files are assumed to either be in plain ASCII text (as created by mailbox files of the UNIX mail program and the rn news reader), or translatable to ASCII through a separate filter process.
This program would be of use to anyone who saves mail and news and wants to make the contents available on the web, for example, someone who uses mail to record activities related to a project. (The multiple HTML pages could be used to correspond to different project phases.) The associations of different messages and articles would allow a single message or article to be part of different sets of web pages. A single subject could be part of different sets of web pages.
Two programs that perform a similar function were found through searches using Alta Vista: MHonArc v2.0 and Hypermail. Neither of these have graphical user interfaces. Both programs appear to be dauntingly complex to the beginner. Both would appear to be able to be made more friendly through a graphical user interface.