[Discuss] FOSS email that doesn't suck -- does such a thing exist?

[Rich Pieri]

On 3/18/2013 9:50 AM, Robert Krawitz wrote:
> I've used rmail for the better part of 30 years and never lost anything
> to this.  What's the specific issue?

The specific case is with pop3.el.

The POP3 transfer process pulls each message from the server and appends
it to a transfer buffer and then issues a DELE command. Once the
transfers are complete the transfer buffer is written out to a crashbox
and, once written, a QUIT command is sent to the server to actually
delete the transferred messages and close the connection.

Some time during 1999 or 2000 the MULE maintainers added an automatic
override to my setting the POP3 transfer buffer to 'binary. They set the
transfer buffer's coding system based on the first multi-byte character
detected.

There are no multi-byte characters in a RFC 2822 message.

The result is a coding system that does not match the buffer contents.
This silently corrupts the transfer buffer and the user loses all of the
mail transferred that session.

-- 
Rich P.