Is user lock-out required for backend xfers?

[Wesley Craig]

On 17 Mar 2009, at 11:26, Matt Selsky wrote:
> Quoting Wesley Craig <wes at umich.edu>:
>> I'm pretty sure this is because neither the frontends nor the clients
>> are able to intelligently handle the kinds of transient errors that
>> are returned.  Frontend improvements might be possible.  Client
>> improvements are Sisyphean.
>
> What could the frontends do that would be better?

Lie?  Try again?  Not having any reason to look closely at the  
problem lately, I can't say for sure what the proper solution might  
be.  But the frontend *can* tell what's happening, i.e., there are  
some distinct states that the xfer'ing mailbox progresses through.   
For each of those cases, the frontend can probably do something  
smart, e.g., retry, make the MUA wait until the mailbox is again in  
an accessible state, something else that might become apparent  
looking at the code.

:wes