[Evolution-hackers] Major changes to Camel for tinymail requirements

[Philip Van Hoof <spam pvanhoof be>]

Hi there,

>From a vendor who's very interested in using tinymail on their devices,
I received a few pages with requirements. I'm also expecting that some
other vendors will soon send their requirements too.

Most can (and probably should) be implemented in Camel (often they can
also be implemented in tinymail itself).

To name a few of my own ideas and that have frequently come back: the
possibility to merge and backup the on-disk cache, partial retrieval of
messages, retrieving messages by omitting the attachments, a
vfolder-like feature that doesn't consume a lot ram (the evolution
vfolder features 'do' consume a lot ram) and a few requirements that
basically come down to: support for summaries in the pop provider of
camel (you know, it's 'not' practical to store all messages, fully in
mbox format, on a device with very few storage capacity).

Most the requirements are going to imply major changes to Camel
including changes that would, if they would go upstream, imply changes
to Evolution and even to how Evolution works with E-mail.

I'm definitely planning to find ways to support features like this and
I'm definitely going to implement tinymail is such a way that they can
be supported (and eventually will be supported).

An option is, indeed, to start using Camel statically in the Camel
implementation library of tinymail and care less about upstream Camel.
It being an option, does not mean that it's the option that I prefer.

I do therefore think that it would be a good idea to meet about this
list. I cannot release the original requirements document, as it might
have been sent to me under my non disclosure agreement (I'm not a lawyer
so I'm not going to test it by publicising it). This also implies that
such a meeting maybe can't be a public one. But I'm willing to ask the
vendor what can and what can't.

I'm of course interested in findings ways to cooperate with upstream.
I'm even willing to giveaway some of the projects that these
requirements will generate to other people and companies in the
community who are interested in implementing them. Obviously I will
implement some myself too.


-- 
Philip Van Hoof, software developer at x-tend 
home: me at pvanhoof dot be 
gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org 
work: vanhoof at x-tend dot be 
http://www.pvanhoof.be - http://www.x-tend.be