RE: Which mail system?
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On Fri, 19 Feb 1999 14:45:06 -0000 (GMT), (Ted Harding) wrote:
>Be careful not to get confused here. I think, when you are using Netscape
>to connect to your ISP's mailserver then you are in effect using it as a
>browser which happens to be reading your mailbox on the ISP's mailserver,
>much as it would read another URL or a newsgroup.
Uhm, no. Netscape happens to have the transport of the mail built into
it. It is perfectly capable of reading mail from the local machine. Let's
not confuse the matter bu saying he is "browsing" his mail on the remote
machine.
>You need a "Mail User Agent" (MUA) like elm, pine, mutt, ... (which don't
....
>You also need a "Mail Transport Agent" (MTA) like smail, sendmail, exim
>... This is the software which sits in the background and handles the
>transmission of mail.
.... So what is to stop him from using, for example, pine with POP
retrieves and SMTP sends? No MTA is needed because the client handles
transport on and off the local machine.
>Netscape does not function as an MTA.
Yes, it does. It sends to the assigned SMTP server. This is no
different than a "real" MTA acting in smart-host mode.
>Once you have you MUA and MTA set up on your own machine, then you can
>read and write mail "in the background" whether or not you are connected
>to your ISP. As I am doing at this moment.
However, in most cases (not his as I agree that what he asked for was
fetchmail) the antiquated method that *nix applies to mail, where the MUA is
not responsible for the transport of mail on and off the machine through
POP/IMAP/SMTP, is not something to endorse. Granted, if he is going to use
fetchmail he is going to need an MTA, but to say that people need an MTA to
send mail is flat out wrong.
- --
Steve C. Lamb | I'm your priest, I'm your shrink, I'm your
ICQ: 5107343 | main connection to the switchboard of souls.
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