mail processing module?

[Alex Martelli]

"Michael Haggerty" <mhagger at alum.mit.edu> wrote in message
news:m266kd45m0.fsf at freak.kaiserty.com...
    [snip]
> In fact maybe a better breakdown would be one module that represents
> an email message and allows data to be MIMEd into and out of it, one
> module for sending such messages via SMTP, one module for retrieving
> such messages via POP, and one for retrieving via IMAP.  The

An *excellent* architecture.

> interfaces for the two retrieving modules should be as close as
> possible, and ideally the interface to the mail-sending routine should
> be generic enough that one could write a module with the same
> interface but that sends emails by writing them to, e.g., sendmail or
> qmail.

Definitely a great idea.  This would enable separate modules
using, for example, MAPI, or some other proprietary mail-sending
and/or mail-receiving architectures, which may be the only
effective way for mail in/out in some settings.  If we focus
on a central module handling an easy-MIME-I/O-message, and
sending and receiving modules respecting some abstract
interface, writing cross-platform mail handling applications
is made much easier -- the only issue becoming one of ensuring
the 'right' implementation-modules are being used for the
specific platform.


Alex