Re: how to make desktop app send email?

[Sean Middleditch <elanthis awesomeplay com>]

On Fri, 2004-07-16 at 11:06, Rob Adams wrote:
> Wait, are you trying to actually send the mail, or just open a partially
> filled out mail window for the user to send mail?
> 
> If you want to actually send the mail, just popen() a pipe to the
> sendmail command and grab a convenient MIME-encoding library to do
> attachments.

That isn't a real solution.  Most desktop boxes are incapable of sending
out mail using the sendmail binary.

Just because we geeks always configure out MTA to use the convenient
SMTP server free of POP-before-SMTP gimmicks and the like to send our
mail doesn't mean the average network setup has anything similar.  Heck,
in our network, the only reason we have an internally accessible SMTP
server at all is for my Linux desktop, because there wasn't a stable and
usable Groupwise client around when we set things up.

The best solution from a desktop stand point is to provide a library
interface that hooks into the users' already configured and working
MUA.  Which is what we have, iirc, with evolution-data-server.  For
other MUAs... too bad, there just isn't a solution for them unless they
start exporting a common API for sending messages, which doesn't seem
likely. (Although any MUA can plug into evolution-data-server.)
-- 
Sean Middleditch <elanthis awesomeplay com>
AwesomePlay Productions, Inc.