🚀 go-pugleaf

A while back I wrote about a fairly ambitious project that we have
to create the ultimate mail system.  I had lots of ideas from our
team locally, most of which were echo'ed by net.people.  There 
were also quite a few new ideas from the net.  I won't list all the
people who responded, as it'll waste even more bandwidth :-).

There were a lot of queries about "why another mail system"?  We are
currently locked into MS-Mail for DOS user, which doesn't talk to 
the rest of the world easily, plus have a large client who uses Higgins
(which has its own interconnection problems), a bunch of people who
use MHS-based mailers.  Then there are those (like me) who use Real
Mail (TM) on Unix computers.  We have people who swear by MH (me), Elm,
Pine, /bin/mail, Mail, mailx and even VM.  We want to migrate the DOS
community to a mailer that can talk to the rest of the world and doesn't
fleece us, and would like to make the same interface available on 
workstations, remote PCs, etc.

We envisage an environment where we have a number of mail repositories,
where the primary mailboxes live.  User will connect across the LAN, 
over dial-ups or will have their mail batched and forwarded automatically.
The LAN link might be client-server or NFS/Novell disk mounting.  We 
want to separate the user interface from the mail engine, so that users
can roll their own interfaces if they so desire, or customise one of the
the interfaces that we will provide.

Well, enough of that.  Here is a (marginally) rationalised feature wish-
list from all of you out there:

Features requested by lots and lots of people:

User Interface
==============

      different modes:  GUI, text, command-line
      multi-media/MIME
      urgent messages
      batch interface
      pre-sorting 
      both news & mail
      subject threading
      separate read/unread mail
      tsr to monitor
      scheduler/calendar interface
      forms/voting, send executable presentation
      registered mail (notify on receipt, on reading)
      external editors + builtin
      consistent
      shared mailboxes (eg: mailing lists, boss/secretary, workgroup)
      multi-part messages
      prioritised mailboxes
      reminder/calendar/atrun/cron
      toolbox of building block to "roll your own"
      fax gateway
      voicemail  (?)
      hooks for other add-ons
      bbs (netnews) interface, plus restricted groups

Addressing
==========

      auto-extraction of reply addresses into address-book
      address-book support + X.500
      address-list interface to external database

Utility Functions / Features
============================

      search on headers or text
      easily customised
      duplicate & detatch part of mailbox for remote processing
      customisable headers
      encryption/privacy/authentication
      auto-reply 
      forwarding (based on filters)
      filters
      encryption
      autonomous processing
      auto-filing incoming mail
      auto-mail-rejection

Folder Support
==============

      heirarchical folders
      multiple folders open at once
      one file per message (a la MH)
      folder ageing
      auto-filing of outgoing mail

Enclosures/Attatchments
=======================

      enclosures/attachments
      multi-media/MIME
      forms/voting, send executable presentation
      fax gateway
      voicemail  (?)

Programmatic Structure
======================

      _understandable_ config files
      server support for POP/IMAP/PC-MAIL/SMTP
      NFS/Novell mountable mailboxes
      local/remote mailboxes/folders
      off-line read/reply/compose
      numerous mailbox formats supported automagically
      numeric timezones
      use standard transports
      stats & accounting
      ability to separate message from attatchments
      filter on MIME parts, attatchments, mail type
      synchronisation of mailboxes (local, semi-interactive, batch-remote)





-- 
 Paul Nash                                   (voice) +27-12-8413050
 Network Services, CSIR Infotek                (fax) +27-12-8414109
 PO Box 395, Pretoria, 0001 South Africa    (home) paul@frcs.alt.za