Sending email over SMTP with STARTTLS (sending email via gmail)

[Ben Rubinstein]

I have a venerable app which does some automated work on a schedule, and 
emails a report.

The app uses Shao Sean's libSmtp, dating back to 2005. It's typically set up 
using an organisation's internal SMTP server to send email.

Now my client has switched to using Google Apps for business, and asked me to 
switch the app to using a gmail account they've set up for the purpose to send 
emails.  Entering the credentials they provided fails with a nessage inb the 
log "530 5.7.0 Must issue a STARTTLS command first".

Evidently this is all part of the shift to encrypting all communications (so 
it's the FBI's fault!).  I don't think libSMTP handles this bit of the 
protocol - and I don't know whether it even can be done through LiveCode, 
since my understanding is that this requires SSL/TLS support.

Is it possible to send email over SMTP with TLS using LiveCode?

Has anyone managed to send emails by SMTP to gmail server?

Many thanks,

Ben