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Email management
Created Thursday 10 January 2008
to be sent ot etoile.
Note: this is not a specification ... It's just how i would like my mail reader to be :)
Email management should be split into 3 programs:
1. Mail Checker
This program should check new mails connecting to POP servers, IMAP, RSS or whatever else. It should be able to filter those messages given some rules and these rules should tell the program where to put the new emails. It could be:
- A plain file in a directory whose name should be determined by the rule (sequencial number or depending on the headers)
- In a mbox file
2. Mail Viewer
A mail viewer should be able to open from the filemanager mbox files and plain email files.
For plain email files, it should display in a new window the full content of the email (common headers + text)
For mbox files, it should open in a new window (or a currently opened window, at user's choice) the content of the mbox. To do that, it should split the window vertically in two panes.
- The top pane should display all messages in the mbox in threaded view. It should remember between invocations which mail was selected the last time.
- The bottom pane should display the message selected in the top pane.
If the mail viewer is opened directly (w/o specifying a file to open), it should display a window split horizontaly in two panes:
- The left panes shows the recently opened emails and mbox files. It could also contains a bookmarks menu that holds the favourite emails/mboxes of the user
- The right pane should display the item selected on the left. That is either the mbox or the email as specified above
In either of those three views, the mail reader should be able to invoke the mail editor to reply to messages.
- In the mbox view, there should be a button to add a message to the mbox file that launches the mail editor
- If a message is selected, there should be usual buttons to reply, transfer, ... the message and it should launch the mail editor:
- if the message is in a mbox, the mail editor should be told to save the message in the same mbox file
- otherwise, it's up to the user to choose where to save the message
3. Mail Editor
The mail editor is either invoked alone, or by the mail viewer to create new emails or reply to existing emails. It can have multiple arguments:
- usual headers (subject, body, to, cc ...)
- if it is a reply then the message it replies to:
- a plain email file
- a mbox file with a message number
- where to save the message (optional)
- in a plain email file
- append in an mbox file
The mail editor should save the message where specified (or not, if the user chooses to) and should be able to send the message ia SMTP or any other protocol.
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