Re: libfetchmail (was Re: Camel)

["Jesse D. Sightler" <jsight mindspring com>]

Mikael Hermansson wrote:
> 
> On Tue, 15 Jun 1999, Anthony Joseph Seward wrote:
> 
> > Is there any reason for not making a libfetchmail?  It seems to me that most
> > of the functionality for a transport library is already in the fetchmail
> > program.  All that remains is to seperate what would be useful for a library
> > from the fetchmail interface and the add any functionality that it currently
> > lacks.  Is there some problem with this?
> >
> > Just a suggestion.
> 
> IMHO! I dont understand this discussions about POP3/IMAP/SMTP.
> That all the people on the list is talking about :-)
> 
> First of all we need to have a good gnomebased mail "reader"
> that have all features as pine/mutt, search functions and other
> important stuff. In the moment balsa bug as hell and is unusabel as
> reader...

Er, I wouldn't say unusable.  I use it quite a bit actually.  What are
the major bugs that you are having?  PS - If you say anything that turns
out to be a bug in the IMAP/SMTP/POP3 mailhandling code, we are going to
have to shoot you.  :-)

> Fetchmail/Sendmail is doing the other things greats as daemons :-)

Yep, and then we need local mail handler code.  The transport is still
an issue, just a more reliably functioning one in this case.

> When we have a good working mailer then we should start talking about
> implement POP3/SMTP/IMAP as libs or maybe use gnome-mailer codebase.

Again, it's just not that simple.  POP (generally) demands a very daemon
like fetchmail functionality.  IMAP demands support for disconnected
IMAP.  This carries with it issues like, "when should mail be deleted
from the server"?  Where should messages be stored?  Should we support
persistent storage?  And plenty of others that I can't think of right
now, but mainly I just want you to understand that the User Interface
and interaction with the mail 'fetching' is not quite the same for IMAP
as it is for some other/simpler protocols.

And besides, hopefully, we can do all of this in parallel.  :)
-- 
---------------
Jesse D. Sightler
http://www3.pair.com/jsight/

"Do not use a hatchet to remove a fly from your friend's forehead." 
      - Chinese Proverb