On Mon, Apr 01, 2002 at 10:00:04AM -0800, Vineet Kumar wrote:
| * Simon Hepburn ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) [020401 00:20]:
| > dman wrote:
| >
| > > Will KMail automatically try at ever-increasing intervals for a given
| > > amount of time and then genarate a bounce that _will_ be delivered to
| > > the sender if the mesasge can't be delivered? For the first point, if
|
| Well, these also aren't strict requirements of every MTA.
No, but the only alternative is to bounce the message. Either the
message _must_ be delivered, or a bounce _must_ be delivered to the
sender. If neither of those occurs, you've just broken the "reliable
delivery" property of SMTP.
| > > I'm not discrediting KMail in any way, I just don't believe that
| > > any MUA should try and handle SMTP.
| >
| > For the case of a standalone box without permanent connection I
| > have to disagree. Keep it simple.
|
| Keep it simple indeed.
Always. Refactoring :-).
| Simple as in nullmailer or ssmtp. Both are examples that an MTA can
| be trivial,
No. ssmtp is not a true MTA. It doesn't guarantee reliable delivery.
It just implements enough of SMTP to make a smarthost accept a message
if all goes well. If any errors occur it doesn't handle them
gracefully. At least, its documentation says that.
| and the tried and true model of "do one thing and do it well" lives on.
Precisely :-). This goes hand-in-hand with KISS.
| This kind of debate can go on and on (and often does on mutt-user
| when someone asks "why can't mutt deliver to my ISPs mail relay?")
| It's a design decision. I think most people will agree that it's a
| cleaner design to keep it simple and have each program do one thing
| and do it well, especially when the tools to do the SMTP part
| already exist Freely =)
Right.
| My point is (with these seemingly somewhat conflicting statements) that
| practically speaking, it is possible, but from a philosophical point of
| view (i.e. if I had to design an MUA from scratch right now) SMTP
| probably doesn't have any place in an MUA. That's no reason to stop
| using your favorite MUA, though.
No, it's not a reason to stop using KMail (or whatever you are using).
IMO it is a reason to not use that part of the code in it.
-D
--
For society, it's probably a good thing that engineers value function
over appearance. For example, you wouldn't want engineers to build
nuclear power plants that only _look_ like they would keep all the
radiation inside.
(Scott Adams - The Dilbert principle)
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