Life with no mail client-here's my comments on how and why.

[Luke -Jr]

On Saturday 05 January 2008, Monty J. Harder wrote:
> On Jan 4, 2008 2:10 PM, Luke -Jr <luke at dashjr.org> wrote:
> > > you could just telnet to your POP3 and SMTP servers; that would be
> > > using the telnet e-mail client
> >
> > I don't believe either POP3 or SMTP support the Telnet protocol.
> > So using a Telnet client *might* work, but that is a coincidence from the
> > simplicity of the protocols involved.
>
> Any protocol that uses TCP and human-readable text "supports" the *telnet*
> * client*.  That's the way most of the Internet got designed.  When you're
> testing a server, you telnet to it and converse via the protocol you're
> trying to implement.  Once you get the server running, you can implement a
> client that talks to it.

Which telnet client? While it may often work in practice, how many non-telnet 
protocols allow for Telnet features like AYT, or feature negotiation?