On Sat, Apr 10, 2010 at 09:19:50AM -0400, Wietse Venema wrote:
> So this is really about sending yourself mail via IMAP, instead of
> listing yourself in the Cc: address box.
Email Cc'd to the user does not necessarily arrive in the Sent folder
(it does for Gmail users, but Gmail's "folders" have annoying quirks
when used with IMAP).
Also, IMAP offers bandwidth efficient cut/paste message composition
mechanisms for suitably inter-operable low-bandwidth devices. The
client does not need to move all the message data back and forth.
> That saves no bandwidth - instead it reverses a single MTA->IMAP
> mail flow into IMAP->MTA, at the cost of another protocol.
The end-to-end story is bit more complex, because the user may be
responding to a large message, by e.g. forwarding a large attachment, ...
so the data is already on the IMAP server.
> There are smarter ways to do this: teach the IMAP server how talk
> authenticated SMTP (it can proxy the user's credentials, just like
> the MTA can proxy them with BURL). Then, the IMAP server can manage
> the entire message composition process instead of relying on BURL
> kludges.
Marshall Rose did something like this in the late 80's with the pop server
in MH toolkit. That POP server supported a message submission command,
so that POP clients did not need a separate SMTP server.
I too would have expected a new IMAP extension that would allow the IMAP
client to ask the IMAP server to post the message. I don't know why this
route was not taken.
--
Viktor.
P.S. Morgan Stanley is looking for a New York City based, Senior Unix
system/email administrator to architect and sustain our perimeter email
environment. If you are interested, please drop me a note.
