Re: OT: why I don't want CCs
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On Wed, Jul 16, 2003 at 01:39:53AM -0700, Steve Lamb wrote:
> Not in my view. I never understood why people have such a woody on having
> an MTA on a machine that most likely doesn't need it. The mail client is
> perfectly capable, or at least should be, of talking basic SMTP to contact a
> single SMTP server for "smarthost" purposes.
Because it's pointless and un-necissary to impliment the better part
of an MTA into an MUA. This was one of the things that started
Windows MUAs on the bloat cycle. "Well, we almost have an MTA
implimented in this MUA...let's go ahead and almost impliment an MDA
and almost impliment a web browser and almost impliment an html editor
and annoying-feature-that-breaks-sent-messages-for-everyone-else and
fully impliment something that allows arbitrary code sent from
anyone to do anything apon receipt..." OK, so the line of thinking
probably didn't include the last one. But the result of such remarks
happened anyway, and by my estimation, because everything in the above
statement happened along the way.
One program, one function. It really does just work better that way.
That whole thirty seconds of thinking and keypoking at eximconfig to
take a stand against bad MUA design is *not* going to hurt you, no
matter how many software ads tell you komputers is hard and that's why
their (slapdash, profiteering, wrong) way is the only way and thinking
otherwise will cause pain.
> The last time I had that particular discussion someone pointed out that
> mail clients shouldn't speak SMTP since they would have to do queuing and dns
> lookups and whatever to do with the email if an error arises? I simply asked
> what a mail client does now if an error arises from, say, the MTA not being
> installed?
All of them, with the exception of ones that were ported from windows
(Mozilla, Netscape), or the ones that make similarly bad design
decisions as the Windows MUAs (kmail and any other MUA that thinks
it's also half an MDA or MTA), because they make the safe assumption
that transport is not the user agent's job (it's not, that's the
transport agent's job). Also, cron is a required component of the
system, which depends on an MTA. How else is it going to give users
output? Osmosis? Telepathy?
> Clearly it is an error condition and something must be done about
> it.
Actually, I think it more clearly demonstrates that you got your idea
of software design from the Windows world, which ignores real-world
stability and security issues.
> Why can't that same resolution to an error condition (unable to
> contact MTA) differ if the method is SMTP vs. a locally run program,
> etc? *shrug*
And most people also don't like waiting on their confused half-an-MTA
to sit there and spin when something it's tiny brain can't handle
happens, like destination SMTP server got yanked out from under them.
At least with a real MTA operating in parallell to your MUA (the right
way), your MUA hands it off and lets you keep moving with your day
instead of waiting on delivery or leaving it floating around limbo in
some outbox. If it runs into a problem, you get the bounce just as
fast either way, and if you're offline, it'll get sent next time the
link comes back up automatically, even if you're not logged in.
Considering how much easier to configure the MTA once and let it run
versus telling everybody how to set up a bastard MTA/MDA/MUA program,
I can't even understand how this design became so prevelant on any
platform...
- --
.''`. Paul Johnson <baloo@ursine.ca>
: :' : proud Debian admin and user
`. `'`
`- Debian - when you have better things to do than fix a system
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