Re: POP3 protocol question

[Mark Crispin <[e-mail]>]

On Thu, 13 Oct 1994 01:27:54 GMT, [e-mail] wrote:
> Sending mail is but a small part of SMTP.

Say what?????????????????

I don't know where you might have gotten this fascinating bit of
misinformation but pleased be assured that it is wrong.

Sending mail is the primary, indeed the sole, purpose of SMTP.

> Adding the ability to send
> mail to a POP3 server requires adding one more command and execing
> sendmail with the proper options to take the mail from the POP client.

Uh, excuse me.  The message header does not contain the correct list of
recipients of the message except in the most trivial cases.  It absolutely
does not in blind copies or groups.

> Also, adding the ability to send mail via the POP3 server from a
> client is also simple.  Much simpler than having to open yet another
> connection to yet another server and then doing in effect what you are
> doing to send the mail to the POP3 server, but with a more complicated
> protocol.

c-client's SMTP code is less than 150 lines.  Including extensive comments and
the usual Copyright Notice From Hell, it weighs in at a massive 8,637
characters.

Anyone who finds SMTP daunting is likely to find it even more daunting to
implement RFC-822 and MIME correctly.

Nor is it very difficult to open a second TCP connection once you have
mastered the technique of opening the first one.