Designing an email client

[austinphilp]

For educational purposes I want to build a c++ email client and calendar app, the calendar I suspect will be fairly simple, the email client part however will be much more complicated, from my research so far I think I need to learn the ACE networking library and pop3 imap and smtp standards, I'm currently reading C++ Network Programming, Volume I: Mastering Complexity with ACE and Patterns, but I'm not sure if that books a right fit for what I'm trying to learn.. any advice or tips?