			libESMTP, version 0.1
			      -- oOo --
	      	Brian Stafford	<brian@stafford.uklinux.net>

			  2nd February 2001

What is libESMTP?
-----------------

LibESMTP is a library to manage posting (or submission of) electronic
mail using SMTP to a preconfigured Mail Transport Agent (MTA) such as
Exim.  It may be used as part of a Mail User Agent (MUA) or another
program that must be able to post electronic mail but where mail
functionality is not the program's primary purpose.

LibESMTP is not intended to be used as part of a program that implements
a Mail Transport Agent.

LibESMTP is an attempt to provide a robust implementation of the SMTP
protocol for use with mail clients.  It is being developed as a reaction
to the experience of incomplete or buggy implementations of SMTP and
also to help remove the need for the installation of MTAs on workstations
which only need them to provide a sendmail command for a mail client to
post its mail.

It is hoped that the availability of a lightweight library implementing
an SMTP client will both ease the task of coding for software authors
and improve the quality of the resulting code.

Important
---------

This is a very early release of libESMTP.  It has not yet been thoroughly
tested or debugged.  Expect problems.  It was felt that it was better
to get the code with other developers quickly and to solicit feedback
than to wait for a few more weeks.

Licence
-------

LibESMTP is licensed under the GNU Lesser General Public License and the
example programs are under the GNU General Public Licence.  Please refer
to COPYING.LGPL and COPYING for full details.

Obtaining libESMTP
------------------

LibESMTP may be obtained from:
	http://www.stafford.uklinux.net/libesmtp/

Requirements
------------

Currently libESMTP does not require any additional packages to be built.

Documentation
-------------

LibESMTP documentation is available on the web at:
	http://www.stafford.uklinux.net/libesmtp/api.html

What does the 'E' stand for?
--------------------------

The 'E' in libESMTP is there because support for a number of SMTP
extensions is built in to the library by design.


