> reason #1: because, in theory, It'll be easier in the long run to put XML > tags on all the iMail pages to use as my templates. also, the XML transform > tool in .net can then take the modified XML stylesheet and directly output > the finished file.
You're going to have problems with some emails that contain special characters. MSXML does not support ISO-8859-1... er something like that. Anyway, long story short: Some HTML emails will not work with XML... not even MS XML 4.0 using !CDATA... and imagine what would happen if someone emailed you a message with a closing tag in it... ie ]]) or a </message> tag or something similar. Since you have to handle the message body on the client side, you're going to have to use mucho DOM and JavaScript as well. If you're combining the XML data file and the XSL style sheets on the client-side, there's going to be even more javascript. If you're combining the XML/XSL on a Microsoft server... well, you're going to have to deal with a lot of cross-domain/port and IMail security problems. With IMail's template language it's easy to get 50% of what you want done. The last 50% is going to need duct tape, blood, sweat, and many tears. Remember that you're going to be using some Microsoft technology served up through IMail's primitive web server. It's also one thing to customize a few variables in the templates. It's a whole different beast to practically rewrite every single page. There are around 200 web messaging template files and around 100 calendaring templates. Some of them don't seem to be used for anything. If this is just something for yourself, you can take your time and it's no big deal. I don't mean to discourage you. It's just that I have been trying to do something similar when I've got some spare hours here and there... and it's a pain. Basically, I'm using COM/ASP/XML to build this honking wrapper for IMail's web messaging. It may be pretty, but it's also pretty freakin' slow. > reason#2: Becuase I've been itching to learn XML and .NET, and this seems > like a good project to learn on. (let's just call it motivation to learn) May the force be with you. It ain't easy, but if it's a learning excercise that you're getting paid to do, I guess it's worth it. -Norm Please visit http://www.ipswitch.com/support/mailing-lists.html to be removed from this list. An Archive of this list is available at: http://www.mail-archive.com/imail_forum%40list.ipswitch.com/ Please visit the Knowledge Base for answers to frequently asked questions: http://www.ipswitch.com/support/IMail/
