Preamble
 ========
 
 What follows is the original documentation of Allegro Post-Office
 library.  In this port to non-Allegro Lisps the system has been
 renamed from "imap" to "post-office" and the package "net.post-office"
 received a nickname "post-office".  SMTP part of the port is not
 complete because it relies on yet unavailable components.
 

 imap: A common lisp library for sending and receiving email.
 ============================================================
 
 Table of contents
 -----------------
 
  * Description
  * Author
  * Author comments
  * Documentation
  * Platforms
  * Dependencies
  * Installation
  * Configuration
  * Licence
  * Notes
  * Examples

  * Open Source

 
 Description
 -----------
 
 A client library for sending and receiving email.
 
 Author
 ------
 
 John Foderaro, Franz Inc.
 
 Author comments
 ---------------
 
 The most popular protocol for accessing a mailbox was the Post Office
 Protocol (POP) defined in rfc1939.  While it is popular, pop has very
 few features. It doesn't allow you to manage the mail on the server
 itself, instead you usually just download all mail to your local
 machine. A much more powerful protocol called the Internet Message
 Access Protocol (IMAP) was defined in the 1996 document rfc2060. With
 imap you can work with your mail while it's on the server and can
 create folders on the server in which to archive your mail. Thus the
 server itself can be the message store which is useful if you want to
 access your mail from more than one machine. You are not required to
 use the server to archive your mail with imap, you can use it like pop
 and download all the mail to your local machine.
 
 Sending email is done via the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol
 (SMTP). You can use smtp to send mail directly to the destination but
 typically this is not done because the destination machine may be down
 or unreachable at the time you wish to send the mail. Most
 organizations have a local mail server that is up and reachable all of
 the time. You can use smtp to send your letter to that local mail
 server and it will then take over the job of getting the mail to the
 destination (which may involve queueing the message and retrying to
 send it over a period of days).
 
 Platforms
 ---------
 
 Allegro Common Lisp 7.0 and newer on all platforms.
 
 Dependencies
 ------------
 
 None, but for the test suite, [tester](http://opensource.franz.com)
 is required.
 
 Installation
 ------------
 
 Start Allegro Common Lisp and load the load.cl file
     :ld /path/to/load.cl
 
 Configuration
 -------------
 
 Set the following variables to true for extra debugging information:
 

     (setq net.post-office::*debug-imap* t

           net.post-office::*smtp-debug* t)

 Documentation
 -------------
 
  * [pop and imap interfaces]
    (http://franz.com/support/documentation/current/doc/imap.htm)
  * [smtp interface]
    (http://franz.com/support/documentation/current/doc/imap.htm#smtp-1)
  * Also see the imap.html file that is included with this source code.
 
 License
 -------
 

 The aserve source code is licensed under the terms of the
 [Lisp Lesser GNU Public License](http://opensource.franz.com/preamble.html),
 known as the LLGPL. The LLGPL consists of a preamble and the LGPL. Where these
 conflict, the preamble takes precedence.  This project is referenced in the

 preamble as the LIBRARY.

 Notes
 -----
 
 For reference please see rfc1939 (pop) and rfc2060 (imap).

 Examples and Information
 ------------------------
 

 See the first link in the documenation section above for examples.

 
 Franz Inc. Open Source Info
 ---------------------------
 

 This project's homepage is <http://opensource.franz.com>. There is an
 informal community support and development mailing list
 [opensource@franz.com](http://opensource.franz.com/mailinglist.html)
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