The XO and email

[Shikhar]

Hi,

I would like to get the general feeling about the XO and email. There is 
a Gmail activity but no possibility of composing and viewing emails 
offline, which I think is important.

Also, I want to post some of my ideas for an email activity for 
feedback, and know of any fundamental flaws. My motivation is to be 
working on this as a Summer of Code project. I would like to be doing 
this regardless, but my academic schedule would not allow for it except 
this summer

- With Python, an email activity can be accomplished with the 
RFC-compliant email modules (for POP, SMTP, IMAP, MIME) and using sqlite 
for storage. So while building upon Tinymail 
(http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Tinymail) is an idea, it makes sense to just 
go with Python email modules and sqlite if the next point is to be 
implemented :-)

- Email should be organized around tags not folders (Tinymail uses 
traditional mailbox formats), and to that effect also make it easy to 
tag email, as easy as dragging and dropping a tag onto a message. Basic 
automatic tagging ('received', 'sent', 'unsent', 'trash', 'junk'; 
'listname' when mailing list headers found)

- A separate non-essential daemon can be implemented waits for internet 
access and performs sending of unsent email and receiving of new 
messages when internet access is available. Rationale: a child may not 
launch the activity when internet access is available.

- Use service descriptors, so that minimal setup (only username and 
password) is required for common email services like Gmail. This also 
lays the ground for the client querying the school server for a service 
descriptor in case it becomes common for school servers to provide email 
services. The service descriptor could also provide spam headers which 
the service adds on (SpamAssassin, Gmail's spam filtering headers) 
although I have not yet researched this point and how easy it would be 
to develop a format for describing them

- Email threading: there is some Python code at 
http://www.amk.ca/python/code/jwz, which could be adapted

- Search using sql queries

I have a good mental picture of what I want to do - maybe I am not 
communicating it too well, but I am willing to elaborate. I would really 
like your feedback especially on the fundamental idea of using Python 
email modules and sqlite in case I am thinking in the wrong direction, 
although this appears to me to be the best approach

Best,

Shikhar