Re: Fwd: Balsa default mail submission on TCP port 587, not port 25 [major@satx.rr.com]

[major <major satx rr com>]

On 2001.07.11 08:36 Brian Stafford wrote:
> Or are you trying to imply that I'm so stupid as to have written what
> I claim to be a standards compliant SMTP library without having read or
> understood the relevant standards or made provision for the requirements
> of the standards?

My initial post to balsa-list@gnome.org (Subject: "Fwd: Balsa default mail
submission on TCP port 587, not port 25 [major@satx.rr.com]", Date:
2001.07.09 04:11) concerned what I perceived to be a misunderstanding by
some users of Balsa and libesmtp on the use of ports 587 and 25, and not a
misunderstanding by the developers. I merely wished to point out to the
readers of the mailing list who were not familiar with the differences
between message submission and message transfer that Balsa and libESMTP
were compliant with the latest RFCs and provided a mechanism to communicate
with SMTP servers that still use port 25 for message submission. If I
inadvertently gave the impression that the developers were in some way
incompetent, then I apologize. I believe that all are highly competent and
skilled.

I feel that my subsequent post to balsa-list@gnome.org (Subject: "Re: Fwd:
Balsa default mail submission on TCP port 587, not port 25
[major@satx.rr.com]", Date: 2001.07.11 06:56) was misunderstood. My desire
was to point out the relationship between the human user of an application,
in this case a Mail User Agent such as Balsa on libESMTP, and the concept
of "default" as is conveyed by the user interface, in this case the default
port, and the terms in the relevant proposed rules, in this case the RFCs.
RFC2476 is all about Message Submission and reserves port 587 for that use,
but makes it plain that port 25 may be used as well. How one determines
what a reasonable "default" port should be is relative to one's intent. A
library, like libESMTP, that is intended to be commonly used by many
applications seems to rightly use what is most likely to be a standard on
the Internet, like port 587, and it does so, although one could consider
that the application should specify the port to be used, and that the
library should not provide a default at all. An application, like Balsa,
that is intended to provide a user interface is more subtle in
considerations of "default" because of the vagueness of what its potential
users may be like. Should Balsa "default" to port 25 because that is
currently more commonly used for message submission, or should it "default"
to port 587 because that likely will be a standard, or should it "default"
to letting libESMTP decide, or should it "default" to compelling the user
to decide? Different Mail User Agents that utilize libESMTP are likely to
represent different philosophies.

A user interface should provide knowledgeable users the option of using
such knowledge, but a user interface should also provide unknowledgeable
users a shield against their ignorance. The Balsa developers are already
aware of this. The intent of my latter posting was to point out that only
Balsa's human user, whether an unknowledgeable "end" user or a more
knowledgeable agent of that "end" user (for example, one of a program's
developers, more often than not; or possibly an internet service provider's
customer support contact), is in a position ultimately to know the
appropriate port to use, and this dependence should be made plain in what
that user perceives from the user interface. I only felt that Balsa's
interface as of version 1.1.6 could be improved in this regard, and after
having read several postings to balsa-list@gnome.org, I sense that others
concur.

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major@satx.rr.com