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This is where to brainstorm and talk about the JosMail plugin architecture. I'm really just getting started with JavaBeans, though I have an idea about how they work, and they would seem to lend themselves quite well to a plugin architecture.

I'll start by pasting MichaelFried's plugin comments here:

I agree also that we need to have a strong JavaBeans architecture. We could use this architecture to do things such as:

-- MichaelFried

I really like the JosMail plugin idea. What if we take this a step further? What if ALL processing of messages was done with Beans. Hmmm... I just blanked out on this idea so I will have to come back and add more later. :-P

-- MasonZhwiti

What about beans that allow voice/video communications this coule be recorded or live. This may end up being a "Jos Communications" (one program to do all of your communications,wether it was over the phone, email, irc, vid phone, etc.) package if that was available.

--WaynePierce 12/16/97

Having had prolonged exposure to large applications via MS Office, I'm not too gung-ho about the idea of a single "Jos Communications" program. This discussion is starting to bring up the kinds of ideas that went into the development of OpenDoc and, more recently, InfoBus (kind of OpenDoc for JavaBeans). --BillRehm

I'm not up to par on InfoBus yet, but I can say that I definitely agree. We do not want this to become bloatware, or an end-all be-all program suite.

However, it would be very cool to tie in all of our standard communication packages so they work together nicely. In this regard, perhaps we should work on a communications program that allow programs (Beans?) to be plugged in. JosMail plugin, JosNews plugin, JosChat, etc. I'm assuming most of us will be using the Netscape Java-gator browser though. :-)

Wow this is getting complicated. Sometimes I have this urge to just say NO! let's just worry about making a great mail program first! But then if we don't plan it just right, we wouldn't be able to do this other stuff in the future. Argh.

Speaking of mail... if you're on Windows, try SpammerSlammer. It's a free anti-spam program that acts as a filter/proxy between your mail server and your mail program. Very cool.

--MasonZhwiti

My first thought about using Beans for this was that we could start with a very simple client, and extend it as far as anyone wants to. My intent with all those suggestions is that if we do it right, our entire set of programs becomes integrated dynamically.

Also, I agree with BillRehm, and think that MSOffice is quite bloated, but then again, from the perspective of a novice, JOS with a gazillion beans doing everthing would seem quite bloated too. We need to strike a balance of Quality and Quantity of our Beans if we are going to make programs with them. Perhaps we even need to create a special place (analogous to the dreaded Windows Registry...) to store which beans we use for common and not so common tasks.

We might even devise a number of standard beans which are central to the functionality of everyday user programs, and keep these names reserved, just to allow a base to extend from. For example, we could start our BeansRegistry with a Package of Beans named like: WordProcessor, MailClient, Browser (File or Web or other), ChatProgram.

The point is that if we let the scope of our thoughts extend outside our immediate goals, and write good Object Oriented Beans, we can reuse beans as much as we want to, and the functionality of all our applications will be extensible on the fly. This is the ideal environment. -- MichaelFried



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