[Haskell-cafe] who's in charge?

[Donn Cave]

Quoth =?ISO-8859-1?Q?G=FCnther_Schmidt?= <gue.schmidt at web.de>,

> since there is no mail client library even after 10+ years I suggest to 
> rethink the approach, because frankly, it's not working.

Or on the contrary, it may illustrate the advantage of this system.

10 years ago, the putative Haskell Institute might have determined
there was surely a need for a mail client library, and anyone could
see how it ought to work.  But the absence of any such package after
all this time casts some doubt on that, doesn't it?

I personally don't think it's a great idea.  I'm using a Haskell
mail client to correspond with you right now.  If I were to start
from scratch today, and there were a mail client library, I'm sure
I would find something useful in there, but I'm not sure it would
all adapt without changes to my application.

Depending on what you actually need, I think you should look at
the HaskellNet package (IMAP etc.), SMTP, mime-mail.  See what
they do, and how they work.  I don't know, I really haven't looked
at them myself so I don't know what you're in for - it might work
like a dream.  Or it may be that their APIs don't really suit your
needs - the way they handle strings, character sets, I/O, etc.
For me, that kind of issue looms very large in this area of computing,
and that's why I'm skeptical of big packages that try to tie it
all up.  The author of this package will spend a lot of time,
trying to serve the needs of a dozen active users with very
disparate needs.

	Donn Cave, donn at avvanta.com