Re: [Edbrowse-dev] imap

[Adam Thompson <arthompson1990@gmail.com>]

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On Sat, Mar 22, 2014 at 06:04:47AM -0400, Karl Dahlke wrote:
> Adam raises a legitimate concern about "feature creep",
> edbrowse trying to do too much.
> I can see this point, but I also think edbrowse power is partly in its breadth.
> Before I implemented odbc, some people would have thought that was
> beyond the scope of what edbrowse should do.
> And yet I have found it so helpful in my work
> to be able to edit a database table the way I edit a file.
> Similarly for managing a directory,
> rename a file with a substitute command.
> It is the same interface for many tasks.

I can see this and indeed quite like the common interface for some things.
However I'm worried about the increased complication,
particularly as it looks like the browser code's going to explode into much
more code than it is currently.

> When bringing up an email I can go to a hyperlink
> within the email, the way explorer and outlook merge together
> in a seamless whole.
> I can also cut&paste things to and from emails as I formulate a reply.

Yeah I can imagine that's quite nice.

> The fact that people ask for imap suggests to me that they want
> this unified experience to extend to imap, and quite honestly I probably
> would too if I ever used or needed imap, if I ever had lots of email
> to deal with, which I don't.

This is true, but I wonder if it would be possible to make a set of tools which
work together, sharing a common interface,
rather than a single combined program.

> In fact you can see I moved in that direction from the outset, with my filters,
> which automatically save certain emails to certain files based on subject
> or sender etc.
> What chris referred to in his imap settings,
> a folder with all emails from me, can almost be done in edbrowse today with
> 
> fromfilter {
> Karl Dahlke > kd-mail
> }
> 
> My option to extend and continue this strategy is not ideal,
> as chris points out, because the folders and arrangements of emails
> are not on the server, and not seen in a consistent way from
> all machines and devices.

In addition, if you have as much email as I do,
that'd probably come fairly close to filling my hard drive.

> That doesn't impact me because I only look at my mail from one computer,
> but I know my friends at work had this concern as they viewed mail
> from cell phones and many such devices, so I get it.

Yeah, I'd struggle with that as well.

> I guess I need to look at the imap support that is offered by curl,
> since we already have curl in our product.

Yeah, and we can probably use it for smtp and pop3 if we don't already.

> I would hope to present a similar email interface to the user,
> close to what we have today,
> but with more commands like switching folders (imap folders on the server),
> or a list of all folders, etc,
> and perhaps a way to reply to an email without necessarily having a copy
> of it on your computer.

You'll probably want to download the email to quote in most cases,
so replying without downloading is probably not needed.

Cheers,
Adam.

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