QPOP3 Preliminary Documentation

Introduction

This document describes the preliminary release of qpop3, a POP3 client for SMS/QDOS. This client uses an industry standard sockets library to communicate with the POP3 server. At the time of writing, the only available TCP/IP stack and compatible sockets library is that of uqlx. The program will work without any further change with any other TCP/IP implementation that uses the same trap 2/trap 3 interface as uqlx (as defined here . If the implementation uses a different trap structure, then a relink would be required with the relevant socket library; of course, if the long awaited c68 RLL system materializes, then it would just be a case of installing the relevant RLL socket library.

Usage

qpop3 requires a single configuration file and two environment variables (i.e. you need to have installed env.bin, which is available here).

The configuration file is defined by the environment variable QPOP3RC, and is a subset of the format used by the Unix fetchmail program. This file defines the POP3 hosts, user names and passwords.

Each POP3 server listed in this file will be selectable in qpop3. The file has the following format:

• Blank lines are fine.
• Comments are delimited by #.
• POP3 servers are introduced by the keys poll or skip. qpop3 does not differentiate between these keys.
• User name and password must follow the same line as a poll or skip keys.

The following file illustrates these rules:

	# 

	poll trespassersw.dld.org user foo pass NotThisOne
	poll tw.dld.org user bar pass NotThisOne
	poll tigger.dld.org user baz pass NotThisOne
	poll dld.org user quux pass NotThisOne
	poll mail.dld.org user guest pass guest

	poll pop3.demon.co.uk user jrhudson pass DeadAccount
	poll your.isp.org user your_name pass Secret
    

	setenv "QPOPRC3=win1_qpop3.rc"
      

Then running qpop3, results in the following screen.

The required POP3 server may be selected from the left hand menu. As the item mail.dld.org is the only one with a valid user name and password, selecting this item results in the following:

Note that some of the options on the lower left hand side are now enabled, and the messages available on the server are listed.

Selecting a message from the list of messages will enable some more buttons.

The available options are fairly self-explanatory. The interface supports multiple selection; for example if you select items 1 and 3 and then click 'Delete', then messages 1 and 3 are deleted. Note also the deletions are only committed when 'Close' is selected, and any deletions prior to 'Close' may be reverted by clicking 'Reset'.

The following screen-shot shows the effect of clicking 'View' with the illustrated message selected.

When the option to save message(s) to a file is selected, then the directory defined by the environment variable POP_SAVEDIR is used, if the environment variable is not defined, then ram2_ is used. Messages are stored as msg_N, where 'N' represents the message number. If the file already exists, additional underscores are appended to create a unique name.

Installation

• Copy qpop3 and qless to some where on your executable path.
• Create a configuration file defining your POP3 servers (based on the example qpop3.rc), and set QPOP3RC to define this file.
• Define the environment variable POP_SAVEDIR if required.

Bugs

• The program does not access files from a local mail spool.
• The configuration file format is not compatible with fetchpop. A better solution would be to port fetchmail to QDOS.
• The program is read only. A future enhancement might allow creation, replying and forwarding of messages via a graphical interface (and SMTP).
• The message list and view message window could do with horizontal scroll bars; any hints as how to achieve this with the brain dead PE gratefully received.
• An external viewer qless is required is view messages. This could be implemented as part of qpop3.

License

This software is released under the GPL or Artistic License (yor choice). Please see the included files COPYING and Artistic. qpop3 is (c) Jonathan Hudson, all rights reserved.

A better way

The file popper3.pl is a perl/Tk program that implements similar functionality, it has the advantage of running under both Unix and Win32 and being infinitely easier to write and maintain then the QDOS/PE example.