The XO and email

[Jameson "Chema" Quinn]

I don't have anything too useful to contribute, I just wanted to say that it
would be great if you could make a new activity. I looked into making one
based on Tinymail as my initial get-to-know-sugar exercise, but I have ended
up working on Develop. I only saw enough to see that tinymail is really a
large set of useful components, you have to glue everything together
yourself. Therefore, if you are creating an innovative interface, and if
you're up to it, it may be just as effective to shop around for the
components you really need (such as Dovecot) and then do more in your own
application, rather than learning all the bits of tinymail. Reduce the
surface area of contact between your code and foreign code, as it were.

This is great that somebody is doing this.

On Thu, Feb 21, 2008 at 7:55 PM, Asheesh Laroia <asheesh at creativecommons.org>
wrote:

> On Thu, 21 Feb 2008, Shikhar wrote:
>
> > 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.
>
> I think that might be nice also!
>
> > - 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 :-)
>
> You suggest using sqlite for storage, and further, as I understand it,
> writing your own mail storage layer.  But on the other hand, you could use
> an existing top-notch Free Software mail store, like Dovecot.  Dovecot
> comes with full-text indexing for search of email, for example, and header
> caching to optimize common queries ("Tell me all the From, Subject, To,
> and Date headers").
>
> That's my main contribution to this thread - I fear you won't re-use some
> already great software.  The rest of your suggestions could perhaps be
> implemented as Dovecot plugins to minimize wasted work; for the most part,
> I agree with them. (-:
>
> Once you start thinking of this in terms of interoperability with existing
> mail systems, I think you'll find you have way less work to do.  For
> example:
>
> > - Email threading: there is some Python code at
> > http://www.amk.ca/python/code/jwz, which could be adapted
>
> Built-into IMAP, which Dovecot implements.
>
> > - 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
>
> IMAP provides SEARCH TEXT, which Dovecot can now (as of 1.1.rc1) store an
> index for, and therefore return answers in split-second times in many
> cases.
>
> -- Asheesh.
>
> --
> You're already carrying the sphere!
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