2004-11-17T22:24:29 Mads Laursen: > [ disclaimers, but ] I am hard pressed to see how mutt, as > the MUA, is _not_ the right place to have IMAP support? I > know an external tool could pull the IMAP-store to local > (mbox/maildir/...), but wouldn't that be an ugly solution in the > general case (connected to the server, workstation, nfs-shared > filesystems, etc.)? Mutt has some imap support, enough to help folks limp along using it as a direct imap client. I build that into my own mutt builds as an emergency tool. But mutt capitalizes on the Unix tool-using approach. To make it really completely full-function as a direct imap client, it'd not only need to have whatever warts remain in its imap support all fixed up, it'd also have to absorb the functionality of a filtering LDA like maildrop or procmail, complete with the external component integration capabilities that they offer. The resulting monolith would be ... well, monstrous. When you abandon the Unix tool-using approach, you also would want to incorporate a flexible, configurable, spooling SMTP client as well. At some point it'd make since to add another few percent, bung in a kernel, and call it a distro:-). Unix folks, or at least the ones mutt is targetted at, take advantage of the exponential power of concatenated tools. Fetchmail is a very pleasing basis for interacting with imap servers. -Bennett
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