Hello James,

>> I think Lothar was asking about the sending end of the transaction.

Exactly. I run into it when i wrote a script yesterday helping me to
send out some mass email. Even with about a few hunderts of email
addresses the current SMTP class is running into problem very soon if
you use foreign SMTP servers.

>> As for the receiving end, any real MTA gives you the ability to specify the
>>  delivery agent--deliver to a mailbox, pipe to a process, whatever. It's
>> not Ruby, but it'd be pretty simple to set up Postfix to do just what
>> you said. Postfix is pretty.

Postfix is nice but maybe a complete overkill for most systems. A
simple receiving SMTP + POP3 server would be enough. The original SMTP
internet protocol is so damned simple.

JB> Ah.  Still, I'd like an app that listened on port 25 and knew the HELO,
JB> and so on, commands, so that there would be no dependency on some 
JB> external MTA.  (This is probably not so hard to do, maybe more a matter
JB> of time; I think at one point I had to go poking around the SMTP 
JB> protocol so that some bit of code could talk directly to the recipient
JB> process.

Yes, the python library does this in 549 lines or 19 KByte.

-- 
 Best regards,                        emailto: scholz at scriptolutions dot com
 Lothar Scholz                        http://www.ruby-ide.com
 CTO Scriptolutions                   Ruby, PHP, Python IDE 's