A mail client with extended capability?
 

A friend - a unix/Solaris man - changed jobs recently and set up a linux system to do his work on. He continues to email me using Netscape mail. I asked him why. He said its the only client he has found that runs under linux that will let him leave his personal mail on on his pop3 server account, but allow him to delete it when he deletes it locally.

The reason he wants to do this is he has several accounts he reads from several locations. He wants to be able to see all 'active mail' from any location, yet he wants to be able to delete junk once he's dealt with it and not have it continue to show up at the other locations. Netscape's client will allow him to do that, he says.

So, I experimented with several linux mail clients. KMail, for example, will allow me to leave mail on the server, but it continues to be left there after I delete the local copy I've opened and read. Ximian works exactly the same way. Balsa ditto.

Does anyone know of a mail client that will do what he's looking for short of running the entire Netscape Communicator engine?

Thanks.

Are you sure that he is using a POP3 account and not IMAP?

It does seem strange that a POP3 account would do that, and for e-mail clients in linux not to posess that functionality.

even mozilla/netscape(> v6.x) has a option for deleting pop3 mails when deleted locally. but it does not work. I'd really like to see this feature working on the a linux pop3 mail client, its a pain to keep my local mailbox and the remote pop3 mailbox synched if i delete messages locally.

He swears it works just fine, he'd just rather not use the Netscape mail client for other reasons.

I agree - many people want to be able to do what he's doing (myself included). It's an obvious feature to have in an email client.

POP3 isn't really for the purpose you describe though. IMAP is a much better protocol for having an e-mail account where you need access on many different machines.

I expect you are right, that IMAP is really what he wants.

But his ISP might not support IMAP.And apparently Netscape sees enough of a demand for this kind of feature to implement it. Which suggests to me that some of the Linux mail clients might do likewise.