Re: Avoid POP3

[Miles Fidelman <mfidelman@meetinghouse.net>]

Jesus arteche wrote:
> We have a problem. We are building  an app which uses Roundcube to 
> read mails. It's ok for IMAP accounts, but we need to read an account 
> provider who just uses POP3. We need to read it without download the 
> mails.  There are some way to read the mails from POP3 account without 
> download...maybe a gateway to IMAP...some idea?

POP does not necessarily delete messages after downloading:

- the protocol specifies different commands for reading and deleting; 
messages marked for deletion are deleted when the QUIT command is issued

- you may notice that a lot of mail clients have a preference setting 
for whether or not to delete messages after reading

- one can assume that utilities and libraries for accessing POP accounts 
provide similar options

Having said that, some of this is also configurable on the server side.  
Different mail hosts will delete messages after a period of time, limit 
the size of mailboxes, automatically delete messages after download, and 
so forth.  This behavior may or may not be under a user's control.

But your query raises a question:  if you're building an app, why not 
use a library routine to access mail servers?  Roundcube is a client/app 
itself.



--
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In<fnord>  practice, there is.   .... Yogi Berra