One thing I'll note is that at least here at the University of
Washington, one thing we hear constantly from our users that they
*do* want a PIM to integrate email and calendaring into a single
application - that's one of the main attractions of Outlook for
people (no matter how good or poor the integration actually is).
- Oren
On Jan 13, 2006, at 3:52 PM, Morgen Sagen wrote:
I was thinking about where on the scale from "none-at-all" to "full-
blown" Chandler should be when it comes to our email
implementation. It would take one heck of a Chandler email client
to make me stop using the application I use now. If we have an
incomplete implementation that tries to be an email client, then
I'll probably end up dealing with email in two places (in Chandler
and in my other email app) which I'm not sure is optimal. If we
want to instead embrace existing clients and figure out how
Chandler can interoperate with them, one possibility would be to
embed an IMAP server inside Chandler. People could then stick with
their favorite email client, connected to their usual IMAP server
and *also* connect to the Chandler IMAP server running on their
local machine. What does this enable:
1) A way to get items into Chandler: We could use IMAP folders
being served from Chandler itself as a mechanism to create Chandler
items. Say an email comes in and I want to make a task out of it
-- just drag the message into a Tasks folder in the Chandler
account (all within my email app's UI) and Chandler automatically
generates a Task Item in the repository containing the body of that
email. Attachments would be extracted an converted to items, etc.
2) A way to get items from Chandler to email client: Items within
Chandler could appear as emails within the Chandler IMAP folders.
They could then also be forwarded to other people just like any
other email message, using your mail client. The Chandler IMAP
folders could be 'virtual', meaning you could create a folder named
OSAF, and all Chandler items which have the OSAF tag would
automatically appear there. Or there could be folders per
collection, etc.
3) A way to generate/send email messages from Chandler: I believe
it would be easy to have Chandler trigger a mail client to open up
a message-authoring window, complete with To: and Subject: (and
maybe the body too?) pre-populated, ready for the user to edit/
send. Or an alternative would be for Chandler to directly create
an email message in the local Chandler Drafts folder, ready for the
user to edit/send.
Chandler would also continue to have (internal) IMAP/POP/SMTP
client support:
4) Simple emails such as sharing invitations don't really require a
full blown email client UI, and thus could be sent using something
akin to the current detail view, not using an external client.
5) Chandler could monitor the user's real IMAP/POP inbox, watching
for special emails that are Chandler specific (like sharing
invitations) and processing them.
My understanding is that Twisted has server-side IMAP support
already, so we wouldn't be starting from scratch. This is
something I might tinker with...
~morgen
P.S. There are other scenarios like having Chandler actually be an
IMAP proxy between your email client and your IMAP server...
another possiblity.
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