OpenSSL? Making an e-mail client

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xlucas
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OpenSSL? Making an e-mail client

Post by xlucas »

Hi! I would like to write my own e-mail client in FreeBasic. I've been reading and found that POP3, IMAP and SMTP seem to be pretty straightforward. If not encrypted, it's easy to do via Telnet, which, if I understand correctly, from a programmer's view, is simply sending the data packets via TCP just as they are. But nowadays most e-mail servers will only accept encrypted communication and I think for this, I would need OpenSSL. I wonder if there are examples in FreeBasic using this. Also, if I'm very wrong, any hint will be appreciated too. I've never attempted something like this before. Cheers!
TJF
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Re: OpenSSL? Making an e-mail client

Post by TJF »

Find a complete set of TSL (SSL) socket functions in GIO, a sublibrary of GLib.

Just for couriosity, which features do you miss in existing solutions?
xlucas
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Re: OpenSSL? Making an e-mail client

Post by xlucas »

Hi! Thank you! This looks good. But this is C++ based, right. Is there more or less the same thing in C (non-OOP)? Anyway, this gives me a good place to start reading.
TJF wrote:Just for couriosity, which features do you miss in existing solutions?
I want to do this mainly to acquire the knowledge and become "fluent" with the matter. On the other hand, none e-mail client I have come across is "perfect" to my liking, though many are good. All the features I like are in some client, but none has all of them. Some of the ones I am the most interested in are:

* Dark background for both interface and the e-mail body, that can override colour coming with the message
* Small and simple, not bloated
* Ability to save my e-mail on my local disk in a simple format (direct text), not in a special e-mail format

And a feature that I will only have if I create my own:

* Ability to bind with my own FreeBasic routines and "bots" to do automated tasks with nice code, no strange scripting languages

And well, as a programmer, when I want to do something, I normally don't think about whether something like it already exists, because what I want to do is make the program, not just "have" the program. This is what lead me to learn programming in the first place. It's just my view, kind of something natural in me. I don't know if the same thing happens to anybody else. I'm kind of surprised that I've been asked this kind of question so many times (that is, why I am not using some other pre-existing software instead of making my own). But well, that's just me.
Munair
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Re: OpenSSL? Making an e-mail client

Post by Munair »

GLIB/gtk is mainly C-based and easy to use with FreeBASIC.
TJF
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Re: OpenSSL? Making an e-mail client

Post by TJF »

xlucas wrote: Feb 08, 2022 0:25But this is C++ based, right. Is there more or less the same thing in C (non-OOP)?
Not right. It isn't C++, it's C. Trust me, you wouldn't like a non-OOP solution.

Have you ever thought about developing a plugin for Geary?

@Munair: Sorry, I didn't read your post while writing.
xlucas
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Joined: May 09, 2014 21:19
Location: Argentina

Re: OpenSSL? Making an e-mail client

Post by xlucas »

Thanks, guys. Well... I really want to build my own. I would like to have total control of how it looks, so I wouldn't want to use a widget and I wouldn't want to make a mod for an existing one because I like programming. There are several e-mail clients that I like enough and are acceptable for me. I just want to have something more than acceptable, something that is exactly what I want. Until then, I'll use the acceptables, ha, ha, but I'm a programmer and well, I want to do the things myself.
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