Re: mail-delivery-agents?

[Dirk.Eddelbuettel@qed.econ.queensu.ca]

  Dale Scheetz writes:
  Dale>  The current way I manage my e-mail involves using popclient to get
  Dale> incoming e-mail from my ISP (mail.polaris.net) to dwarf's incoming
  Dale> mail folder on my machine (dwarf.polaris.net), 

Same here. I advocate edd@qed.econ.queensu.ca, which forwards to
edd@rosebud.sps.queensu.ca, my wife's Debian box on campus, from where I
popclient everything to the house (edd@miles, dynamic IP).

  Dale> outgoing mail is handled by Pine using SMTP.

I use smail, locally and for outgoing mail. _Very_ easy to setup and change
all the time because Ian Jackson wrote a fantastic /usr/sbin/smailconfig.

The only problem is that you have to "fake" another email address for
outgoing mail.  There are several ways to do it, directly with emacs, pine
(as you compiled the switch in, on my hint :-) and elm, or via smail
indepently of the MUA as was recently discussed on debian-user.

I also use procmail to sort my mail into 21 (!!!) different mail folders for
different mailing lists.

  Dale>  I would like to try some other mail readers like elm and emacs but
  Dale> none of these seem to be able to do SMTP and so require the presence
  Dale> of a mail-delivery-agent.

I can really recommend emacs with the vm mode. Really. 

  Dale>   I know I have heard pro and con discussions about smail vs sendmail
  Dale> but am still confused. Also I hear hints that qmail (?) will soon be
  Dale> a Debian package. I am a complete idiot when it comes to mail
  Dale> systems, so please be simple and clear in your answer ;-)

Goes with smail. Use the "smarthost" feature of the smailconfig for outgoing
mail.

  Dale>  What do I need to understand to install and use any of the available
  Dale> packages?

Nothing, basically :-)

  Dale>   If I am going to go to the trouble o1f learning to install a
  Dale> mail-delivery-agent I will want to be able to filter mail to various
  Dale> mail-folders based on the source of that mail.

You can already do that with your existing setup. Just install procmail, and
email me for examples.

  Dale>  If that is not available in the mail-delivery-agent, then point me
  Dale> to a package that will work with the target mail-delivery-agent.
  Dale> 
  Dale> Thanks in advance for any help,

Pleasure.

--
Dirk Eddelb"uttel                             http://qed.econ.queensu.ca/~edd