Re: I don't know if this is an old question - is there a FAQ for this project?

[Ken Yap <ken@nlc.net.au>]

>As far as I can tell all the text mode email clients I have seen (I was
>using Mutt for a while) use external means to send email, such as
>Sendmail.  Now for a home machine such as mine this really sucks since
>many servers will reject mail now if it doesn't come from a valid
>domain.  Not many low-income home users have a domain name.

A Mail Transfer Agent like sendmail or qmail is a must. It doesn't have
to be on the user's machine, it could be the ISP's. When the user dials
in she will be assigned an IP number from the ISP's range and thus will
be a valid host on the ISP's network. So no working around anti-spam
measures is necessary.

>Anyone know of such a client?  I have to use Netscape Mail at the
>moment.  And I know you can cheat your way around Sendmail's security
>but as it is an anti-spam feature I don't think it is in the internet
>communities best intrests to cheat it.  And I imagine that most home
>users would rather not have to run an sendmail or something.

One advantage if running your own MTA is offline queueing.

My friend uses pine, it's set to contact the ISP's MTA directly but that
means he can only send while online. At other times he has to defer. I
use exmh and run qmail and I can mail anytime, but it's only forwarded
to the ISP when I am dialed in.