send email from command line

[Rashkae]

Derek Broughton wrote:
> Ken McLennan wrote:
> 
>> G'day there Derek,
>>
>>> No, there shouldn't.  Mail was written by people who believe that mail
>>> clients _shouldn't_ speak SMTP, and it _must_ have a sendmail-compatible
>>> program to actually deliver the mail
> 
>>     I've no idea about the pros & cons of mtas. Is there a thumbnail
>> version of the argument somewhere? or can you please explain why someone
>> would think SMTP should be avoided?
> 
> In a word, "No". :-)  I've hashed this over so many times with so many
> people, without getting a response that makes sense to me.  It's just a
> Unix meme.  From the point of view of a program like "mailx", outputting a
> message via SMTP syntax is no different from outputting it to a file - it's
> all just I/O - but all the MTA developers I've ever corresponded with
> (quite a few, especially since I hung out on the Exim developers list for a
> while) swear that it's insane to have a client program need to know SMTP
> syntax.  I don't see where it makes a difference to have to know SMTP or to
> have to know _sendmail_ syntax.


It's insane because it's much more work for the programmer of the mail
client to program all the extra logic.. the possible error and
responses, networking stack, etc etc. (As opposed to knowing only one
sendmail command you need to send the mail, and let sendmail worry about
sending back/handling any errors)

The point is moot however, since mail clients were evolved to work on
Windows where there was no standard MTA program, and therefore needed SMTP.

The point is even more moot since running am MTA on your desktop has
become a casualty of the fight against SPAM, and they no longer work
well out of the box without manual configuration of smarthost forwarding
to your ISP, some of which don't even support this anymore.

For the curious, this e-mail is being forward from postfix on my
desktop, not my ISP smtp, and if you're one of the 5% of the internet
that can no longer receive e-mails directly from me because of it, I've
stopped caring.