Re: E-mail for Pilot

[Ken Rossman - NYC SE <Ken.Rossman@East>]

> From: Jay B Parker <jbp@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> 
> > On Wed, 13 Jan 1999, Jonathan Loran wrote:
> > 
> > There are well established libraries to use for this, which would make
> > management of mail folders and their contents much easier.  University of
> > Washington distributes a copy of these libs for example.
> 
> And what makes UW's C-client libs even more atractive is this:
> 
>   http://www.cpan.org/modules/by-module/Mail/Mail-Cclient-0.4.tar.gz
> 
> I haven't done any C-client programming myself, but theoretically they're
> supposed to completely abstract whether you're accessing POP, IMAP, or
> local mail files, right?

Most front end mail agents do that anyway (that is, after you have gone
through configuring them).  All you see is mail messages...  you don't know
or care that they are being fetched via POP3 or IMAP4.  You only need to
know that when you configure the mail tool in the beginning.

If, on the other hand, you are suggesting that the mail user agent
determine ON THE FLY which protocol set to use, well, I suppose that might
be possible to do, but:

 a) It wouldn't be easy -- you'd have to have the mail user agent query an
    arbitrary number of different types of mail server types (well, lets
    just say it's only two: POP3 and IMAP4), on different TCP ports, but
    then you'd have to decide which one you wanted to use if the server
    offers both protocols.

 b) You probably don't want dynamic protocol selection to take place
    *anyway* because the basic implications of where your mail "lives" are
    quite different in the two cases.  POP3 typically requires you to pull
    down and locally store all of your queued mail from the server (and
    usually, the server then deletes the queued mail it has delivered to
    your portable unit).  IMAP4, on the other hand, expects you to keep
    your permanent mail spool file on the server, with only cached message
    copies being delivered down to your PDA.

In any case, I don't see how a package like the one above could totally
abstract the type of mail delivery you want to use, since there are some
very important, basic decisions you need to make before choosing a delivery
mechanism (like, where does your "master" mail file actually live, for
example?)

Ken Rossman, NYC SE           212-558-9182  ||  212-558-9329 (FAX)
Sun Microsystems              Email: Ken.Rossman@xxxxxxx
One New York Plaza, 35th Fl.  SUN Internal: http://noho.East/~rossman
New York, NY 10004            INTERNET: http://www.columbia.edu/~rossman
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