[ejabberd] is there SMTP gate ?

[Stefan de Konink]

Andreas van Cranenburgh wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 14, 2004 at 02:45:11PM +0100, Stefan de Konink wrote:
> 
>>Andreas van Cranenburgh wrote:
>>>Some things that I would like to see are IMAP and SMTP 'frontends' or
>>>translators for Jabber. Why? So that people can use their reglar
>>>clients, but can also benefit from the advantages of Jabber. Something
>>>like IM2000 or NGMP. But for that a persistent storage of messages is
>>>first needed.
>>
>>Exactly, but if a mod_imap is made the storage of messages can be safely 
>>done serverside via imap.
> 
> IMAP is a protocol, not a storage. Yes indeed there could be a mod_imap
> to listen on port 143, but there could just as well be a seperate
> imap-jabber translator, server independent/agnostic.
Yes, but why not something like a transport? (Or is that what you mean?) 
Teaching a transport the imap-clientside append/store/fetch would make 
direct integration possible.

> How the storage
> would be realized I don't know, currently the philosophy isto keep
> spoolfiles small and tiny, right?
I can't answer that question :) But I think the specific remote storage 
should only be used for the 'messages' comming from the 
translator/transport/module.

The pro of IMAP itself is probably creating just one interface and 
keeping email and jabbermessages serparate by default. A con could be: 
with direct SMTP integration messages could be stored natively on the 
server and neighter a SMTP or IMAP server are required.

So what is prefered? Would everyone migrate of SMTP/IMAP to XMMP? I 
don't see that happen pretty quickly and e-mails stored inside a Jabber 
server need to be available from the outside. Which probably means there 
needs to be a POP3/IMAP/Webinterface created for the recieved/stored 
messages.

Writing all this I think the smtp transport/translator would be the 
futuristic solution but easiest to keep alive. All services are then 
handled within a Jabber domain and thus no external problems/bugs to 
keep in mind, it is backward compatible and works with 
jabberuser at virtualdomain.tld. On implementation level a mix between a 
emailserver and a transport.

Keep in mind this is heading to get the tag 'groupware' soon...


Stefan