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General

JosMail is my idea for a really good email program that could be included with JOS, similar to the way other operating systems include mailers. The only difference is, I'd like this mail program to be on par with commercial email programs like Eudora Pro.

This is going to be a large undertaking (for example, Eudora Pro had 10 different programmers working on it), but it should be fun. I feel that because of how ubiquitous email is, JOS needs to have a very good email program included.

Improve on Eudora Pro?

I use Eudora Pro all the time, and I love it. However, I've used a few others as well that have some nice features: Pegasus (free, includes some preventions for sending spam -- the X-Distribution: header), ZMail on SGI (could call a program to generate a signature dynamically), pine/elm (nice to be able to telnet in and read email).

Now, after using all of the above for a while, IMO Eudora Pro has the most rich feature set. Good filter mechanism (not GREAT), lots of good shortcuts for accessing advanced features (basically, you can hold the shift key down when doing just about anything to get an advanced version of that feature), simple interface, good use of right mouse button pop-ups, handles multiple email accounts (without having to restart the program) very nicely, multiple protocols supported, plugins are supported, templates for new emails and responses, and a lot more.

However, it has some annoying things in it as well as some seriously gaping holes (spam filtering options, multi-threading, etc.). If we could add these features as well as others, and fix the problems, we would have a top notch mail program. With the upcoming release of the JavaMail API, it seems like a good time to get started planning it.

Ideas

These are mostly the ideas I have that I wish were added to Eudora Pro. If you don't have Eudora Pro, you should check it out. I'm referring to the release 3 -- I haven't tried the 4.0 beta much (other than to see if these features were in it -- nope).

Multi-threading. How I hate it when Eudora is performing a task (checking email, sending email, compressing a mailbox, deleting trash, etc.) and it pops up the modal progress window that will not let you do anything else as you wait! I love the progress window, but it should be incorporated into the toolbar of the program, and allow me to keep working.

Spam filtering. Besides filters, I think the email program needs to be able to accept a list of domain names or IP addresses that it scans for in the Received: headers. If it detects one of the domains listed, it throws the email into the spam folder. Also, there should be specific spam filters, like one that checks to see if your email address (or any address on your corresponding "safe address" list) is in the To: header. If not, it is considered spam. Note that this would allow you to safely keep good email which doesn't contain your address (like listserv email, announcement emails, etc).

Improved filters. The email program needs to be smart enough to apply filters on messages that have not been downloaded yet. For a POP transaction, the email program could use the "TOP nnn 0" command to pull up just the header, and run the header filters on it. If any of them specify to remove it, then the email is never even downloaded to the client... just deleted right from the server. Furthermore an API should be defined, so that JosMail can call other programs and ask them what to do with a mail it received. --Markus Peter ( 22 Feb 98 )

Macros. I handle a large amount of email each day. I would love to be able to have a simple macro language in Eudora to map macros to a menu option or shortcut.

For example, we always get email from AOLers saying they didn't receive an email from us, and we have to respond with a certain template message. Fine and dandy, except it starts to get annoying to do it: shift click on reply, select the personality we want to reply from (tech support), select the template message (aol nomail), hit OK, Queue the message, send the message, delete the message. A macro could be written to handle this, and we just select it from the macro menu (or hit the shortcut combo) and its done! Time savers...

Macros should be able to be put on timers, or executed at regular intervals.

A TUI. (Textual user interface) for two reasons:

You could telnet into your machine and run JosMail.
It could be included with the GUI or TUI version of JOS.

Support for encryption. Both locally and when the mail is sent. (Including the eventual PGP style of application.) [WaynePierce]

Digital signatures. (Someone expand on this? Wayne? Could this tie into the PGP support?) [WaynePierce]

Support for Jacl as the macro language (see http://sunscript.sun.com). [WaynePierce]

If there is an address book module, there should be a way to print the address book out. This is missing in Eudora. You can't even print the book one entry at a time. This means I have to store all my e-mail addresses in two places: in Eudora and in Sidekick (a PIM). [LestonBuell 2/22/98, (Is it clearer now what I meant?) Yep! Sounds good. :-) --]

Address Book Module ( see: AddressBook ) should be seperate. Thomas, you should define a rich and very usable generic address book interface, and then maybe write an implementation of it. The goal here is that:
1. the address book is exchangable, theoretically even at runtime and
2. all programs running on JOS will be able to use the same address book (finally... the situation on Windows or Unix is unbearable in that respect) -- MarkusPeter ( 22 Feb 98 ) [Good idea Markus! --]
3. The address book module should either use or be able to import/export data in the vCard format. -- BarryPederson (10 Apr 98)
4. Most AddressBook's are inflexible as to what information they hold; many of my friends only have one phone number and many e-mail address' for example. We could use XML to store the entries allowing increased flexibility. Following this each page in the AddressBook should be rendered sepreately, empty fields are distracting. --DigiGod
5. It would be nice to be able to store media with AddressBook entries, such as a picture (if your bad with names like me) --DigiGod
Your idea here.

-- (9/6/97)

How about:

_SNIP! moved to the main list above by _

--WaynePierce (12/7/97) Edited on 12/8/97

Wayne, liked your ideas a lot so I just added them to the main list!

The Digital Signature I was referring to was the VeriSign type, it already works with Netscape and Microsoft. They are working on ways to use as a replacement for User IDs and passwords.

http://www.verisign.com

--WaynePierce 12/9/97

I believe that it should also have a strong, well-documented JavaBeans compliant plugin architecture. This is an area in which I have always found most mailers lacking. Certainly the scripting features would help out a lot with this as well (perhaps even allowing one to replace the JACL scripting engine bean with a JavaScript or even VBScript one).

--JesseSightler 12/10/97

The JavaBeans plugin idea is really cool! Eudora has a plugin architecture, although I think it is a little difficult to work with. Let's throw some ideas around for the JosMailPlugins.

I'm going to cut/paste MichaelFried's ideas there.

I believe most of the functionnality of the mail program should be available to script languages and other java apps through a bunch of interfaces.

Filters and Macros could be call-backs to a script or a class that would use the public members of the objects to get the work done. This would let "power-users" have total control over the program.

-- HenriTorgemane

Microsoft Outlook Express is better than Eudora in terms of UI. Rip those ideas and combine them with the features from Eudora and you have the best program around...

Base the whole app on processing MIME messages. Make it Outlook Express like in that it can deal with IMAP and news too...

...and forget about S/MIME as long as it's not Internet Standard. S/MIME is supported by MS and NS but not widely used. OpenPGP is a better alternative I guess because it's more widely used... But then again, those things should be plugins anyway...

-- JeroenVanGelderen

UIs are eye candy and should be replaceable. In fact, that's what the whole discussion about pluggable look & feel on jos-gui has been about. Let's base the whole idea on processing XML and adding translators to/from XML to whatever other file formats we need to support for other OSes.

Why would you include a newsreader with a mail reader? If it's because they have similarities, I'd agree. So the classes that comprise them can be reused from one app to the next.

As far as S/MIME vs OpenPGP, let's define an interface for secure messaging and pick one to support for starters. If the other one is needed, it should be a straightforward process to include it if it supports the interface we defined. --BillRehm

Here's a nifty, free plugin scripting engine that might be useful: http://www.ooi.com/beanshell/

It's written in Java, and uses Java syntax. --JesseSightler

I have developed an e-mail program in Java before (about 1+1/2 years ago) and at the same time a spam filtering mechanism (even though spam was still in it's youth then) but using the filtering mechanisms mentioned above (generally). I also have a bit of experience with the new JavaMail API, including starting work on my own POP3 store implementation since the current JavaMail implementation only supports IMAP4/SMTP and from what I have seen (at the JavaOne conference) they don't currently plan to implement POP3 in the near future. Has someone actually started work on JosMail, and if not I will volunteer to be the stuckee (even though I don't really see it that way, because I just love e-mail). --BorneMace 04/10/98

Mail filters are good, but what would be really slick would be if a filter scheme was thought up that would work both on the client side (as in a Eudora-like program) and on the server side (as in a MailFey type application).

This would be great in stopping spam at multiple points, and also if a mail server did IMAP - it could sort incoming mail into folders (so if you read you mail through a web browser, it'd be all sorted for you), rather than relying on just a mail client to do sorting. --BarryPederson 04/10/98

Borne - no one has started to work on it yet, please feel free. :) Hopefully I can jump in whenever I have time.

Barry - hey glad you could make it. :) I like the IMAP things, and should be easy with JavaMail. Stopping the spam at the server level is a good idea, but should probably be limited to sure-fire situations (like email originating from a spammer domain, a list of which could be kept and updated at a central location). Another server side spam tactic is to put an X-To: header which contains the email address that the email was actually sent. 99% of the time, my incoming spam is not address to me, but to nobody@aol.com (or what have you). All that would be required is for the user to specify safe addresses (like listserv lists).

It gets really tricky... and all we really need to do is provide a way to plugin modules on the server side and on the client side. Then we can always provide cool filters later. :)

Due to the latest listsrv message from Tim, I think for the present time it may be better for him to work on the e-mail client, since I now have my plate full with server side work, such as the JosCommunicationBusArchitecture and the MassivelyExtensibleServiceSystem. I will be implementing the server side default e-mail service, so I would love to hear input about what service should be used, IMAP4, POP3, or both? I am also more then happy to assist whomever start on the e-mail program, as I have in the past implemented client side filtering, and am therefore experienced with POP3 based Java programming.

-- BorneMace 17 April 1998

Well, I've had no time to write anything, but now I wanted to code a simple e-mail client, since I've read some things about SMTP and POP3, and I think it won't be hard to implement a simple command-line e-mail program. I've telnetted to some pop and smtp servers and checked out some commands. I'll try it out...

-- DavidSPolverari

I think that instead of having two seperate applications for mail and news we would be better server by a combined application to handle both.

Neither the JosMail or JosNews pages have been updated in quite a while so is anyone activly working on either? I have started coding a news / mail client and have got mail sending working. However before I go much further I would appreciate other people views of how the program should work / look.

I suggest if people want to discuss this we should take it up on the JOS-Apps mailing list.

-- AlanKemp alankemp@bigfoot.com

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