>KPOP anyone? You don't really want KPOP (Eudora is the only common client that supports it, and it looks like they're getting rid of the support for it). You want to use SASL with the GSSAPI mechanism, which has the additional advantage of supporting session encryption (which KPOP doesn't). It's the same protocol used by IMAP and SMTP, so you can have some code overlap as an MUA writer.
(I need to update my SASL patches for qpopper and send 'em in). --Ken