Balsa User's Guide
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# Glossary

POP

  An acronym for "Post Office Protocol", a simple method of retrieving mail messages from a remote mail server. Widely used by mail clients from an Internet Service Provider's mail server to a user's machine for viewing. Currently most people use version three of the protocol, otherwise known as POP3. A very simple protocol, and not very flexible, but simple to implement and ubiquitous throughout the internet.

Druid

  The GNOME equivalent to Microsoft Windows Wizards, a step by step dialog to guide the user through a setup procedure.

IMAP

  An acronym that stands for "Internet Mail Access Protocol". It is a newer method of accessing mail over the internet. It is far more featureful than POP3, allowing for remote folders on the mail server, and more control over mail delivery. However it is not as widely supported.

LDAP

  An acronym for "Lightweight Directory Access Protocol". It is a widely-accepted standard for accessing contact information over a network. This enables organizations to store address information in a central database, but have many people able to access it.

libmutt

  The library based on Mutt's code used by `Balsa` to handle local mail.

mailbox list

  The list of mailboxes found in `Balsa`'s left hand pane.

message index

  The list of messages in `Balsa`'s upper-right hand pane.

message view

  The message display in `Balsa`'s lower-right hand pane.

MDA

  An acronym for "Mail Delivery Agent", this type of program is also known as a Local Delivery Agent (LDA). It is responsible for delivering the mail recieved for someone on a machine to the mail folder of that person. `procmail` is an example of this type of program, although many MTA's have their own MDA implementations.

MTA

  An acronym for "Mail Transfer Agent", this class of program is responsible for moving mail around between people, be they on the same computer, on on completely separate networks. Examples of this type of program include `sendmail`, `qmail`, and `postfix`.

MUA

  An acronym for "Mail User Agent", this the program a user would use to read existing mail and create new messages. MUAs are one of three types of programs that allow internet email to work. The other two types of programs are MTAs and MDAs. `Balsa` is primarily an MUA, but it also functions as an MDA/MTA when retrieving mail from a remote server.

Regular Expression

  Often abbreviated as a regexp, this is a method of specifing a pattern to match in text. Both very simple and very complex patterns can be easily matched using this method. For information on how to understand and construct regular expressions the best source is the grep manual or info page.

SMTP

  An acronym that stands for "Simple Mail Transfer Protocol", it is excatly that. A standard that defines a simple an reliable way to transfer messages between computers on a network. It is used by most, if not all, mail programs to transfer mail.

VCARD

  VCARD is a standard method of storing contact information for easy exchange between programs. Balsa supports VCARD addressbooks, as does GnomeCard and the upcoming Evolution. Many other programs are capable of exporting their contact lists in VCARD format as well.

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