[room] Fwd: Re: Advice on CLI mail client that support mail threading

[Michael Shigorin]

----- Forwarded message from Alan McKinnon <alan/linuxholdings.co.za> -----

Date: Thu, 9 Mar 2006 16:09:02 +0200
From: Alan McKinnon <alan/linuxholdings.co.za>
To: sounder/lists.ubuntu.com
Subject: Re: Advice on CLI mail client that support mail threading

On Thursday 09 March 2006 14:41, Senectus . wrote:
> On 3/9/06, Michael Shigorin <mike/osdn.org.ua> wrote:
> > Yes, something else (like getmail or fetchmail) should take care
> > of getting the mail to localhost; something else (like procmail,
> > sieve or maybe ifile) should take care of sorting it over the
> > folders.
> >
> > Something else should also do SMTP to send mail (postfix, exim,
> > msmtp...).
>
> Wait a moment, are you telling me to do something as simple a pop3
> download of mail and reading with mutt I have install and
> configure: getmail
> procmail
> postfix
> AND Mutt?!?
>
> How crazy is that?
> Why does it need to be so complex?

It's not as crazy as you might think. It's TheUnixWay(tm): 
one clearly defined function = one app

"get, read, compose, send and filter mail" is not one clearly defined 
function. It's 5 of them. So,

sendmail, postfix, exim and qmail all speak SMTP and move mail to and 
from your host by communicating SMTP with other SMTP servers. This is 
like getting snailmail into your PO Box, or dropping letters in red 
pillar boxes.
>From their procmail figures out what to do with it next, like 
"sendmail received mail for domain.com. What do I do with this mail 
addressed to user на domain.com?" This is like the mail clerk at a 
company emptied the PO Box, and takes each individual letter and does 
something sensible with it (drops it in someone's pigeon hole, puts 
it on their desk).
Mail for domain.com might actually be received by 
machine.someotherdomain.com and stored there waiting for pickup. It's 
probably made available using either POP3 or IMAP, in which case you 
need a daemon on the server that talks these protocols.
Fetchmail will do things like connect to isp.com and get all mail for 
domain.com, then distribute the mail sensibly to the addressees.

Horrible, isn't it? Email *exactly* parallels how snailmail works. 
Postfix is the Post Office, it drops letters off at the address on 
the envelope without being concerned with the name of the addressee. 
Someone (not the post office) will come along and empty the post box, 
and there are many options here: hand it over direct, put it in a 
pigeon hole, throw it in the bin if it's spam, or hold it for 
collection in the future. That mail will be collected (not 
necessarily by the addressee) and so the process continues. And I 
didn't even touch on alternatives like having a courier company 
handle heavy mail articles on your behalf.

Each of these snailmail functions is done by different people in 
different environments. Email is exactly the same, that's why there 
are so many functions and apps.

It can get easy: for a single user with low volume requirements, one 
mail client can connect to an SMTP server at the ISP to send mail, 
and also connect to a POP server to receive mail. Evolution, KMail, 
Thunderbird et all all do this in one convenient package.

Mutt doesn't work that way. It prefers to read mail files and leaves 
all the other transport and processing steps to other apps.

The truth is that email (like snailmail) is a horribly complex system 
with many variations and pitfalls. It looks easy on the surface but 
as soon as you lift the hood it gets real hard real quick.

-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan at linuxholdings dot co dot za
+27 82, double three seven, one nine three five

----- End forwarded message -----

-- 
 ---- WBR, Michael Shigorin <mike на altlinux.ru>
  ------ Linux.Kiev http://www.linux.kiev.ua/