[Malvern] Mail Clients.

[Keith Edmunds]

On 07/08/2006 12:53:40 PM +0100
GEOFF BAGLEY <geoff.bagley at btinternet.com> said:

> I think that Mutt will not work directly with a
> Web-mail server, but requires a local MTA such as Exim
> or Postfix.

Depends what you mean by a "web-mail server". Are you talking about
GMAil, Hotmail, etc?

Mail clients do not talk to an MTA; they talk to a mail store of some
sort (IMAP, POP3, mbox, maildir, etc). It doesn't matter to the mail
client /how/ the mail got into the store. I suppose to be accurate, mail
clients do talk to an MTA when they are sending mail.

So, it depends what you are trying to achieve. If you want to manage all
your own mail then you may want to set up a mail server with an MTA
(such as Postfix) and maybe an IMAP server (Dovecot is excellent). The
MTA will deliver mail to a mail store (I'd recommend maildir, but you
could use mbox), and your IMAP server will read mail from your mail
store  and serve it via a defined protocol (IMAP) to any client that can
talk IMAP (which is most of them). Or maybe you want to retrieve mail
from a remote site, such as your ISP, in which case you'd need to
understand how they make it available (usually POP3, but POP3S, IMAP and
IMAPS are other possibilities).

Hopefully I haven't muddied the waters too much! Let us know more about
what you are trying to achieve and I'm sure someone can help you out.

Keith