Notes 6.52 Client Does Not Work With GMail POP3

Update: it works! Details posted here.

See my post on LDD.

Gaston and Tom have mentioned the new GMail feature that enables POP3 access. So has Computerworld. So, I tried to set it up in the Notes client. GMail has instructions posted for configuring many popular mail clients, but (of course) not Notes. Still, I managed to figure out what was needed. I was planning on posting a how-to, but...

It doesn't work. Notes won't pull down your messages from GMail, and it won't send messages through GMail. I haven't figured out what the problem is with the POP3 protocol for retrieving messages yet. Still working on that. The Notes.INI settings for debugging the SMTP protocol for sending messages from the client, however, gave me the details of what is wrong for sending messages. Google is not accepting Notes' version of the AUTH LOGIN command, because Notes is sending a base64 string with the command instead of waiting for Google to ack the initial AUTH LOGIN first. This was reported as a problem to IBM previously with respect to another mail system that also had the same behavior. It's not really clear whether it is IBM or Google that is misinterpreting the RFCs on this. I've filed reports with both sides, hoping that one of them will put in a fix eventually. Since Google is beta and Postel's Law says they should be accepting the format IBM is using, my bet is that they're more likely to fix it than IBM.

Update: Response from Google.... "