* On 07 Nov 2012, Derek Martin wrote: > On Wed, Nov 07, 2012 at 08:48:08PM +0000, Chris Green wrote: > > server retrying if my SMTP server isn't running (or connected). That's > > one of the reasons I'd quite like to move away from SMTP. It *should* > > be OK but I'm relying on the other end to behave properly. > > It will. It has to. If it didn't, e-mail on the internet would be > horribly unreliable.
I hate to break it to you, but.... :) I've used IMAP pickup in the past and it's OK for some IMAP servers. A year or two ago my employer moved my mailbox to MS Exchange. Exchange doesn't (necessarily?) hand you the exact e-mail it received. It parses incoming mail, stores the parsed components, and reconstructs the message the best it can figure when you pick it up via IMAP or POP. Along the way it might modify or remove some components for no good reason; for example, multipart/alternative with text/plan and text/html invisibly becomes just a text/html message. I've also heard of its breaking crypto, although I haven't seen that myself for a while. So I forward my mail via SMTP away from my employer now. -- David Champion • d...@bikeshed.us
