Best SMTP/POP library?

[Laura Creighton]

> 
> "Skip Montanaro" <skip at pobox.com> wrote in message
> news:mailman.1043290900.16874.python-list at python.org...
> >     >> http://spambayes.sf.net/
> >
> >
> > Yes, a release is in the works and should be appearing soon.  Keep an eye
> on
> > the website.
> >
> > (Is there a reason you have an email address which looks like it ought to
> > work, but never does?)
> >
> > Skip
> >
> >
> 
> Thanks.  Regarding my email address, yes, it's anti-spam.  If found that
> even with 'munged' addresses (remove obvious garbage and it becomes a real
> address), I got spam.  Now I get none.
> 
> thx

I appreciate that you don't want to leave your real address in any
form which the spammers can use, but would it be possible to send out
your mail as coming from some address which makes it obvious to humans
such as Skip and myself that you don't exist?  My problem is that
since this is a mailing list as well as a newsgroup, and I read it by
mail, when I want to comment privately on anything you say I will send
it to you as a piece of mail, and if I want to comment publicly, I
will still send you a piece of mail, cc'd to python-list at python.org.

Now, usually I read send addresses before I begin to write, and when I
find something like nobody at nowhere.com as a send address I know that
this is about to fail.  I can then check the message to see if there is a
real address left there to decode.  If there isn't, I can decide
whether to just send to python-list or whether just to skip it.  But
if it looks good, I send it out, and then, when it fails, I
investigate why the mail fails.

All of this takes time, and adds to the subjective weight that I feel
when I consider 'do I want to take the time out right now to help
somebody I don't know with their problem'.  The more times I get
burned spending a morning discovering that somebody doesn't exist,
the less trusting I am, and the less willing I am to do this.

You might think, ah well, why doesn't she just ignore mail that
bounces when she sends mail to python-list.  That is not a good option
for me because in this last week I have tracked down and found bugs in
the mail programs of 3 legitimate python users, whose mailers were
configured in such a way as to prevent people like me from reaching
them, and who were unaware that they had such a problem.  They are
very grateful that I bothered to track them down and find out what the
score was.

So could I prevail on you to change your mail address to something that
is more obviously not worth sending a reply to?

Thank you for listening,
Laura Creighton