Re: Mutt Next Generation
* On 2005.01.26, in <20050127011234.GF18161@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
* "Paul Walker" <paul@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> Anybody fancy speccing out such an agent, so that anyone who was inclined
> would have something to start from? All I can think of is:
> ...
> For example, what was wrong with the ones you evaluated previously? (I think
> it was you mentioned this upthread, anyway.)
It was me. I wish I'd built a table of MSAs and faults, because now I'm
not sure what problems went with what program. But in general I found a
mix of:
- nonportable across unixes
- doesn't support configuration
- doesn't support command-line specification of SMTP server
(for roaming users)
- doesn't support SSL or AUTH
- maps user namespaces from local to domain without exceptions
(so that root@some-students-linux-box is considered equal to
root@domain)
The last is not much relevant to mutt, perhaps, but is relevant if a
user makes the MSA the default relaying agent for the whole system.
That's a likely enough scenario that someone writing an MSA should
address it. It's hard to describe how aggravating it is to regularly
receive mail to root@xxxxxxxxxxxx from cron jobs on roaming DHCP nodes I
have no authority over.
> * speaks SMTP (+ AUTH)
> * speaks TLS/SSL
> * accepts mail from the command line
> * simple config file.
> * er... options compatible with sendmail, maybe?
* accepts credentials from an input fd
* allows port selection (e.g. port 587 instead of 25)
* if written in an interpreted language, does not require large
bundles of independently-maintained modules
I have several high-priority things on my plate right now and can't
start a new project, though I might at some point -- as I said, I
can find other uses for this. In the shorter term, if anyone else
starts this project, I'd be willing to contribute.
--
-D. dgc@xxxxxxxxxxxx NSIT::ENSS