Is revolution right for my project?

[delay]

I am looking to develop a fairly advanced email application with builtin
spam filtering, etc.  I am new to desktop application programming and
looking at learning runtime revolution or realbasic most likely.  I
currently know perl and php, so I am not completely new to programming.

My question is... are there any components that deal with the smtp, pop3,
and imap protocols that can be used with runtime revolution. I was only able
to find this on the SMTP and POP3 protocols for revolution.
http://dark.unitz.ca/~shaosean/  It looks like he is still working on
them...  Has anyone developed these protocols?  I wasn't really looking to
do the low level part of the programming dealing with the sockets themselves
as this would probably take me longer than the program itself...  However if
I did decide to work on this... Is there aywhere I could look for
information on developing these?

In general I like the programming environment of revolution and I definitely
like the fact that the application can be built for multiple platforms.  I
also like the fact that it can make use of regular expressions.  Which is a
big part of perl and I would need for many features I intend to implement...
Can my application be developed with runtime revolution or would I be better
looking at a different solution?

Also is there any information on the speed in which revolution can process
info with regular expressions?  I guess I could write something in perl and
then write it in revolution and test the speeds but I was wondering if
anyone had already done this?  Also once an application is developed in
general is the compiled program faster in revolution or realbasic?  Sorry
for all the newbie questions....

Thanks for any info,
-Delay