Michael Collette wrote: > > Discussion: > --------------------- > Which of these points is best for Mozilla in the long run? Are there > alternative methods to be considered? What are the pros and cons of the > various approaches? >
Let me attempt to simplify this issue. There are three alternatives under consideration: continue using the mbox format, change to using separate attachment files, or change to a combination of both. Let's try to separate things a bit. An email message is always text. When the message is anything besides text, we marshal it using the MIME standard. MIME allows arbitrary content types and nesting, and everything is encoded into text with various special headers. Mozilla must deal with MIME, and it should be better at doing so. A MIME-encoded email message has multiple logical parts to it, the parts are not easily manipulated in Mozilla (i.e., deleted or saved), and each part must sometimes get converted into a resource that the local OS can manipulate (i.e., virus check or display an attachment). Look at this problem as two separate contexts rather than trying to create a complex hybrid. The first context is the MIME-encoded mbox format, the second is what the email program lets loose into the OS. Mozilla is presently limited in its ability to manipulate nested MIME email messages. I recommend beefing this up with a library similar to DOM that you could use to get at the parts in the hierarchy and allow a user to manipulate it (i.e., delete, save, or replace). This will fix a number of usability problems in the Mozilla email client. Mozilla should limit its concerns to the MIME-encoded mbox format and be very good at it. Mozilla should allow the user to save portions of the MIME hierarchy into the right folder with the right application type (i.e., file extension or MacOS resource fork), and optionally invoke an existing anti-virus file checker. One last thing I miss from another obscure email program I once used: I'd like to be able to invoke a save and open operation in one step for an attachment. I don't believe attachments should be opened from the temp directory. Instead, always give the user the save-as dialog, and make a temp-directory button available to preserve the current functionality. (I wouldn't use it, but someone will probably complain if it's not there.) This is pretty terse, so please ask for more clarification rather than flaming. Comments? -- 6e77a 70 6e 6e7a! Remove the _no_spam_ from my email address to reach me.
