Re: [PATCH] README: add info about mailing list subscription

[Eric Wong <e@80x24.org>]

"Lin Jen-Shin (godfat)" <godfat@godfat.org> wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 11, 2017 at 4:39 AM, Eric Wong <e@80x24.org> wrote:
> > "Lin Jen-Shin (godfat)" <godfat@godfat.org> wrote:
> >> On Tue, Apr 11, 2017 at 1:36 AM, Eric Wong <e@80x24.org> wrote:
> >> > I guess another question is: do you use IMAP to read mail
> >> > or webmail (or something else, POP3)?
> >>
> >> Oh, now I understand what you're saying. Unfortunately
> >> I am currently stuck with GMail, using the web interface.
> >> I could setup POP3 to receive emails into my inbox (I did so
> >> for some other accounts), but I guess I could not setup IMAP
> >> for GMail.
> >
> > Actually, GMail supports SMTP and IMAP; they just give scary
> > warnings about enabling them because they lack 2FA support.
> > git manpages for git-imap-send(1) and git-send-email(1)
> > document GMail support, even.
> 
> I think GMail does support IMAP as a server, but not as a client?
> I thought if you're setting up an IMAP server, I need to use an
> IMAP client to fetch the mails? Or that's not the plan? Or I
> misunderstand how IMAP works. I never really used it.

Yes; that's what I meant.  Sorry for the confusion...
nntp2imap would work like feed2imap currently does:

	The client (your machine) downloads from a server via
	(NNTP|RSS|Atom) and writes to any IMAP inbox, also as a
	client.  Nothing I've talked about involves either me or
	readers of this list (you included) running a new IMAP
	server :)

But yeah, AFAIK GMail allows you to use any IMAP client
(including feed2imap) to write mail to GMail servers;
which you can then read via webmail or another IMAP client.


I guess part where I confused you is GMail supports POP3 both as
a client (so they can read mail off your ISP/work/school mail
servers) and as a server (so you can also read all the messages
they can also read :)  But yeah, POP3 is rather dated since
most people prefer email accessible from multiple machines
and it's clumsy with POP3.

Maybe some janky arrows in ASCII art will help:

       >----SMTP ---->+
(you)  <----POP3----<-+        .----< POP3 ---< (work|ISP|school POP3)
  ^----<----webmail->-> GMail <
  +----<----IMAP---->-'        `-----< SMTP--< (rest of the world)
  ^
  |
  |`---< feed2imap --<- RSS/Atom feeds
  |
   `---< nntp2imap --<- NNTP

*shrug*  /me is sleepy :x

> > be a part of yahns (Ruby) and not part of public-inbox (Perl5)
> > at this point; so maybe you would be willing host that for
> > other people, too :)
> 
> Yeah, sure, as long as I don't have to expand my existing server,
> I am willing to host it and maintain it for other people.

Thanks for the feedback.  One of my goals is to keep Free Software
inexpensive to run :)