> >MUA - Mail User Agent; Arachne, Netscape, PINE, etc. > >This is the software used to retrieve, send, read, and > >compose e-mail at the user level. 99% of people using > >e-mail will never know anything more about e-mail than what > >they know about their MUA. > > Thank you for making this discussion a bit clearer, Steve. I still, > however, do not no how to call those non-resident DOS MUAs which only > retrieve and send mail (online) in opposition to those which I use to > read and compose (offline). Any more acronyms?
If the program retrieves mail from a POP server, and/or sends it to an SMTP server, then it's still a Mail User Agent... even if it's sending files unrelated to e-mail, or messages composed on other software. That said, many mail programs fall into more than just one category. Fetchmail is both MUA and MDA, since it retrieves mail from POP servers, and then delivers it to the appropriate system users. Sendmail serves both functions of MTA and MDA. It receives mail directly from other MTAs, it sends mail directly to other MTAs, and it delivers system mail to appropriate users. Lines do get a bit blurry sometimes. If you 'telnet ns.arachne.cz 25' and manually type in your e-mail on the remote system (as I've done with this message), then you're basically not using an MUA at all, and are using telnet as a kind of manual MTA... or is telnet a manual MUA and you're just not using a sending MTA at all? Yes, definitions can get fuzzy. ;-) -- Steve Ackman http://twoloonscoffee.com (Need green beans?) http://twovoyagers.com (glass, linux & other stuff)
