[pmmail-list] POP3 in corporate environment

[Stephen Eickhoff]

On Sat, 09 Feb 2002 23:17:17 -0800 (PST), Steve Wendt wrote:

>On Sat, 09 Feb 2002 18:13:40 -0700, Martin Moran wrote:
>
>>How about "Forced to use an Exchange server"?  That's my problem right
>>now at work.
>
>That's horrible enough in itself, but I though it supported POP3?

Yes, but most admins don't, because POP3 in a corporate environment is a nightmare. If you configure the 
clients to leave messages on the server, the users will complain that they're getting multiple copies of mail. If you 
configure them to delete the messages, users will download everything to their PDAs or laptops, then complain 
that the mail isn't available on their desktops. IMAP is the best solution, and it's supported by Exchange, but 
alas, not PMMail. Though I've often wondered if PMMail's remote feature could be changed into a remote mode 
instead, that changes the main window. You could get some of the features of IMAP from a plain old POP3 
server:

- LIST the messages and TOP them for subject and sender.
- RETR a message if it's opened from the client.
- If the client deletes it, send DELE as usual.
- Stuff that's DELEted shows in a cached Trash folder on the client.
- If they unDELEte something in Trash, send RSET and then DELE the other messages in 'Trash' again.
- Don't send UPDT or QUIT until the client exits or times out.

As mentioned in STD0053/RFC1939, this is inefficient and doesn't scale well compared to IMAP. IMAP also 
offers server side folders and polling. But when POP3 is all you got ... Anyway, I always thought it would at least 
be nice to add a feature where the UIDL for each message is saved somewhere in PMMail, so that if a error 
causes the client to exist before a QUIT is sent, that you don't download the same messages again.

----------------------------------
         Stephen Eickhoff
      operagost@email.com
----------------------------------

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