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+Library Overview
+================
+
+Most features (and more) of your every day mail client software are provided
+by Swift Mailer, using object-oriented PHP code as the interface.
+
+In this chapter we will take a short tour of the various components, which put
+together form the Swift Mailer library as a whole. You will learn key
+terminology used throughout the rest of this book and you will gain a little
+understanding of the classes you will work with as you integrate Swift Mailer
+into your application.
+
+This chapter is intended to prepare you for the information contained in the
+subsequent chapters of this book. You may choose to skip this chapter if you
+are fairly technically minded, though it is likely to save you some time in
+the long run if you at least read between the lines here.
+
+System Requirements
+-------------------
+
+The basic requirements to operate Swift Mailer are extremely minimal and
+easily achieved. Historically, Swift Mailer has supported both PHP 4 and PHP 5
+by following a parallel development workflow. Now in it's fourth major
+version, and Swift Mailer operates on servers running PHP 5.3.3 or higher.
+
+The library aims to work with as many PHP 5 projects as possible:
+
+* PHP 5.3.3 or higher, with the SPL extension (standard)
+
+* Limited network access to connect to remote SMTP servers
+
+* 8 MB or more memory limit (Swift Mailer uses around 2 MB)
+
+Component Breakdown
+-------------------
+
+Swift Mailer is made up of many classes. Each of these classes can be grouped
+into a general "component" group which describes the task it is designed to
+perform.
+
+We'll take a brief look at the components which form Swift Mailer in this
+section of the book.
+
+The Mailer
+~~~~~~~~~~
+
+The mailer class, ``Swift_Mailer`` is the central class in the library where
+all of the other components meet one another. ``Swift_Mailer`` acts as a sort
+of message dispatcher, communicating with the underlying Transport to deliver
+your Message to all intended recipients.
+
+If you were to dig around in the source code for Swift Mailer you'd notice
+that ``Swift_Mailer`` itself is pretty bare. It delegates to other objects for
+most tasks and in theory, if you knew the internals of Swift Mailer well you
+could by-pass this class entirely. We wouldn't advise doing such a thing
+however -- there are reasons this class exists:
+
+* for consistency, regardless of the Transport used
+
+* to provide abstraction from the internals in the event internal API changes
+ are made
+
+* to provide convenience wrappers around aspects of the internal API
+
+An instance of ``Swift_Mailer`` is created by the developer before sending any
+Messages.
+
+Transports
+~~~~~~~~~~
+
+Transports are the classes in Swift Mailer that are responsible for
+communicating with a service in order to deliver a Message. There are several
+types of Transport in Swift Mailer, all of which implement the Swift_Transport
+interface and offer underlying start(), stop() and send() methods.
+
+Typically you will not need to know how a Transport works under-the-surface,
+you will only need to know how to create an instance of one, and which one to
+use for your environment.
+
++---------------------------------+---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
+| Class | Features | Pros/cons |
++=================================+=============================================================================================+===============================================================================================================================================+
+| ``Swift_SmtpTransport`` | Sends messages over SMTP; Supports Authentication; Supports Encryption | Very portable; Pleasingly predictable results; Provides good feedback |
++---------------------------------+---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
+| ``Swift_SendmailTransport`` | Communicates with a locally installed ``sendmail`` executable (Linux/UNIX) | Quick time-to-run; Provides less-accurate feedback than SMTP; Requires ``sendmail`` installation |
++---------------------------------+---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
+| ``Swift_LoadBalancedTransport`` | Cycles through a collection of the other Transports to manage load-reduction | Provides graceful fallback if one Transport fails (e.g. an SMTP server is down); Keeps the load on remote services down by spreading the work |
++---------------------------------+---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
+| ``Swift_FailoverTransport`` | Works in conjunction with a collection of the other Transports to provide high-availability | Provides graceful fallback if one Transport fails (e.g. an SMTP server is down) |
++---------------------------------+---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
+
+MIME Entities
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+
+Everything that forms part of a Message is called a MIME Entity. All MIME
+entities in Swift Mailer share a common set of features. There are various
+types of MIME entity that serve different purposes such as Attachments and
+MIME parts.
+
+An e-mail message is made up of several relatively simple entities that are
+combined in different ways to achieve different results. All of these entities
+have the same fundamental outline but serve a different purpose. The Message
+itself can be defined as a MIME entity, an Attachment is a MIME entity, all
+MIME parts are MIME entities -- and so on!
+
+The basic units of each MIME entity -- be it the Message itself, or an
+Attachment -- are its Headers and its body:
+
+.. code-block:: text
+
+ Other-Header: Another value
+
+ The body content itself
+
+The Headers of a MIME entity, and its body must conform to some strict
+standards defined by various RFC documents. Swift Mailer ensures that these
+specifications are followed by using various types of object, including
+Encoders and different Header types to generate the entity.
+
+Each MIME component implements the base ``Swift_Mime_MimeEntity`` interface,
+which offers methods for retrieving Headers, adding new Headers, changing the
+Encoder, updating the body and so on!
+
+All MIME entities have one Header in common -- the Content-Type Header,
+updated with the entity's ``setContentType()`` method.
+
+Encoders
+~~~~~~~~
+
+Encoders are used to transform the content of Messages generated in Swift
+Mailer into a format that is safe to send across the internet and that
+conforms to RFC specifications.
+
+Generally speaking you will not need to interact with the Encoders in Swift
+Mailer -- the correct settings will be handled by the library itself.
+However they are probably worth a brief mention in the event that you do want
+to play with them.
+
+Both the Headers and the body of all MIME entities (including the Message
+itself) use Encoders to ensure the data they contain can be sent over the
+internet without becoming corrupted or misinterpreted.
+
+There are two types of Encoder: Base64 and Quoted-Printable.
+
+Plugins
+~~~~~~~
+
+Plugins exist to extend, or modify the behaviour of Swift Mailer. They respond
+to Events that are fired within the Transports during sending.
+
+There are a number of Plugins provided as part of the base Swift Mailer
+package and they all follow a common interface to respond to Events fired
+within the library. Interfaces are provided to "listen" to each type of Event
+fired and to act as desired when a listened-to Event occurs.
+
+Although several plugins are provided with Swift Mailer out-of-the-box, the
+Events system has been specifically designed to make it easy for experienced
+object-oriented developers to write their own plugins in order to achieve
+goals that may not be possible with the base library.