Sheila Mooney wrote: > Some options for bridging the gap between the desktop and existing email > clients that have came up so far are... > > + Emailing items to a collection on Cosmo ie: Send a /Event to > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > + Drag and drop emails and attachments from other email clients. > + Pull down emails that have special headers. > + Handle a one-time import of an Inbox > + Subscribe / Sync to select IMAP folder(s) ie: Inbox, manage design > list in the desktop. > + The desktop as an IMAP client > + The desktop as an IMAP server > + RSS in and RSS out via desktop/web access
I'd like to add to this list, if I may. I was thinking about Travis' IMAP parcel this evening, and what a great step forward it is. Yet setting up an imap server in the MUA is non-trivial for many users. Even I find it cumbersome in the current crop of GUI mailers. I also find filing messages via drag-and-drop to be a clunky and error-prone operation. My proposal is to extend the stamping functionality to a well-known, cross-platform, open source MUA (I think that leaves Thunderbird), perhaps leveraging the new IMAP server parcel. Once the underlying infrastructure is in place, it would seem feasible to write a simple Thunderbird extension that would add a toolbar button to "stamp" a message as a Chandler calendar event or to-do list item. The extension UI could be as simple as a username/password dialog, perhaps a URL field, plus a couple of toolbar buttons. Foxmarks might serve as a good starting point. When a user stamps a message, the extension would add a few custom headers to identify the content as a Chandler calendar item or a Chandler to-do item. Then the extension would send the modified message off to Chandler or Cosmo, via a well-established protocol (SMTP or IMAP seem like logical choices). I can imagine either scenario, depending on the MUA. The item could then appear in an "incoming" section of the dashboard, waiting for the user to assign whatever additional semantics are needed for proper triaging. In addition to preserving a simple triage workflow and GTD functionality, there would be additional community benefits to this approach. It would immediately attract a large audience of open source users to the Chandler calendaring ecosystem. Foxmarks' fast-paced growth is already demonstrating the tremendous promotional potential of Mozilla extensions. A Thunderbird extension would also demonstrate to developers of other MUAs that meaningful integration with Chandler is possible, and perhaps spawn community-driven plugins for Evolution, Apple Mail, Horde, etc. I can envision a future where Chandler is the ubiquitous calendaring server that any email client can interact with, by simply adding a few headers and leveraging the standard protocols that are implemented in every MUA. Does this seem feasible? Chris _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ Open Source Applications Foundation "chandler-dev" mailing list http://lists.osafoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/chandler-dev
