POP3 support

POP3 support

[Richard Pieri]

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I have just sent my finished pop3.el (version 1.0) to Lars for
integration with Red Gnus.  I think anyone who reads mail from a POP
server will be quite pleased with the changes an Emacs Lisp
implementation will bring about.  Two notable things:

* Running count of messages retrieved.  Very nice to have when you are
  pulling 300 messages down over a modem link.  Win32 users rejoice :).

* If I can figure out the backend interface and spooling scheme,
  messages can be spooled directly into their correct folders, bypassing
  the crashbox stage (which is pretty much redundant given the nature of
  POP3 maildrops), dramatically increasing spooling speeds.  Or maybe
  someone else can cobble this together instead.

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-- 
Richard Pieri/Information Services \ If you're not receiving enough attention,
<ratinox@unilab.dfci.harvard.edu>   \ try knocking over some very expensive
http://www.dfci.harvard.edu/         \ antique lamps. -A cat's guide to life

Re: POP3 support

[Ken Raeburn]

Richard Pieri <ratinox@unilab.dfci.harvard.edu> writes:

> I have just sent my finished pop3.el (version 1.0) to Lars for
> integration with Red Gnus.  I think anyone who reads mail from a POP
> server will be quite pleased with the changes an Emacs Lisp
> implementation will bring about.

Just as long as I can still run movemail to talk to my pop server.  I
assume you didn't implement Kerberos authentication (including DES
encryption) in elisp? :-)

I've been thinking about writing a utility program for Kerberos that
emacs could call, so it could have control of the POP session, but
it's pretty low on my priority list right now.

> * Running count of messages retrieved.  Very nice to have when you are
>   pulling 300 messages down over a modem link.  Win32 users rejoice :).

Sounds nice.  Wish I could use it. :-(

> * If I can figure out the backend interface and spooling scheme,
>   messages can be spooled directly into their correct folders, bypassing
>   the crashbox stage (which is pretty much redundant given the nature of
>   POP3 maildrops), dramatically increasing spooling speeds.  Or maybe
>   someone else can cobble this together instead.

I'd love to see that happen.  Especially if it's asynchronous, so info
from nntp and pop servers can be processed in parallel as it comes in.
Might give me incentive to work on the Kerberos hooks...

Re: POP3 support

[Richard Pieri]

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>>>>> "KR" == Ken Raeburn <raeburn@cygnus.com> writes:

KR> Just as long as I can still run movemail to talk to my pop server.  I
KR> assume you didn't implement Kerberos authentication (including DES
KR> encryption) in elisp? :-)

Don't tempt me :).

Actually, implementing 'extensions' is simple because, unlike vm-pop,
pop3 does implement the full set of basic POP3 commands (except LIST
which is generally useless).

There are two reasons why I did not implement APOP.  One, my POP server,
the Qualcomm qpopper, does not understand it so I cannot test it.  Two,
I have not dug up a precompiled MD5 filter program for Win32, which is
where I have been doing most of my development work.  This is currently
on the to-do list.

As for Kerberos... not a chance of that happening here, so if you want
to implement it, go for it.

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-- 
Richard Pieri/Information Services \ Always give generously - a small bird or
<ratinox@unilab.dfci.harvard.edu>   \ rodent left on the bed tells them, "I
http://www.dfci.harvard.edu/         \ care". -A cat's guide to life

Re: POP3 support

[William Perry]

Richard Pieri wrote:
> 
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> 
> >>>>> "KR" == Ken Raeburn <raeburn@cygnus.com> writes:
> 
> KR> Just as long as I can still run movemail to talk to my pop server.  I
> KR> assume you didn't implement Kerberos authentication (including DES
> KR> encryption) in elisp? :-)
> 
> Don't tempt me :).
> 
> Actually, implementing 'extensions' is simple because, unlike vm-pop,
> pop3 does implement the full set of basic POP3 commands (except LIST
> which is generally useless).
> 
> There are two reasons why I did not implement APOP.  One, my POP server,
> the Qualcomm qpopper, does not understand it so I cannot test it.  Two,
> I have not dug up a precompiled MD5 filter program for Win32, which is
> where I have been doing most of my development work.  This is currently
> on the to-do list.

  There is a reasonably fast implementation of md5 in elisp.  Check out
the latest url package.  Or I can send you the md5.el manually if you'd
like.  You can specify a maximum message size before it shells out to a
subprocess.  Pretty nice.  Plus XEmacs has builtin md5 support (not that
that helps with win32 (yet))

-Bill P.

Re: POP3 support

[Richard Pieri]

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>>>>> "WP" == William Perry <wmperry@aventail.com> writes:

WP> There is a reasonably fast implementation of md5 in elisp.

Spiff.  Considering that it is a short pair of strings being hashed, an
RFC822-style date and a shared secret word or short phrase, blazing-fast
speed is not a requirement.

WP> Check out the latest url package.

Problem: this is, AFAIK, not part of the standard Emacs distribution, so
it's an external dependancy that pop3 cannot be certain exists.  This is
something I tried to avoid since I initially wanted RMS to include pop3
in the main distribution (he declined, citing 'lack of modularity').

Then again, md5sum is not a standard in all operating systems that Emacs
runs on :).

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