[Evolution] [RFC] Mailing List Feature

[Stephen Torri <storri ameritech net>]

Why is the addressbook format in a pdb (Palm Pilot database)? Is there a
way to get it in XML format? I want to create a perl script that will
send emails for a personal mailing list and print out letters for those
that I don't have email address. 

I have people in my contacts who for one reason or another don't have an
email address. Since I want to keep in touch with them and don't want to
waste time crafting a individual letter I am looking at Evolution. I
have all my contacts in one place. Great! Problem is I don't have an
easy way to interact with the Contact database.

Here is an example of what I want to do. I want to send a personal
letter Bob, Sarah and Frank. I have an email address for Bob and Sarah
but not Frank. So I want to use evolution to make a letter to send to
all three.

So I after I create an email and press send I would like to have the
following happen:

- Email is sent to Bob and Sarah. Each email is unique, meaning neither
  Bob nor Sarah see any email address in the header but their own.
  This is done in a Contact List.

- Print out the email as a letter for Frank. The letter starts with
  his name and address at the top, followed by the email contents,
  followed by my name and address.

Now Evolution can handle the creation of the emails to Bob and Sarah.
Cool. What it can't do is either reference an external program/script or
have any means to craft printed letters. The first issue is a potential
security risk. If start doing too much interlinking of applications we
starting looking like a well known virus distribution program from MS.
The second is starting to get outside the scope of Evolution. Evolution
is not there to be a word processing program.

So my proposal is this:

1) We create the Addressbook in a common format like XML. When we
synchronize the database with a PDA we can easily take that file and
convert it to the required format. This way backward compatibility is
maintain for present PDA owners and allows growth for new PDAs and their
addressbook formats. Developers should have an common format to work
from.

2) We make a decision about how to deal with the letter creation:
  2a) Create an XML file with the information for another application to
      print.
  2b) Use another GNOME word processing application to print the
      letters. For example, use Abiword.

I like keeping everything in one place. I just would like to expand a
few things. These are just my observations as a GNOME/Ximian user.

Stephen Torri