Re: how to make desktop app send email?

[Sean Middleditch <elanthis awesomeplay com>]

On Fri, 2004-07-16 at 14:45, Jody Goldberg wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 16, 2004 at 06:58:44AM +0100, Mark McLoughlin wrote:
> > 
> >   gnome_url_show ("mailto:foo bar", &err);
> > 
> > 	would be better.
> 
> Still somewhat problematic given the non-uniformity of support for
> things like attachments, or unspecified recipients.  For example in
> gnumeric I kludge up an attempt to support 'File -> Send To'
> That will attempt to save the current content to a tmp file, and
> launch a mailer without a recipient with the file as an attachment.
> The evo syntax for that does not work with mutt or pine.

If we want something to work with legacy applications, we'd need a new
command (gnome-send-mail or the like), with a given command line syntax,
similar probably to sendmail/mail probably.  The command could then look
up the user's preferred mail client, and "backends" could be registered
which are basically scripts called with the commands and options given
to it, and the backend can then translate to the appropriate command and
options for the user's preferred client.  gnome-send-mail could then
also have built-in integration with evolution-data-server or the like,
which I imagine will be the common case for MUA on GNOME, and Just
Work(tm) as users would expect.

Extend that to provide a libgnomemail with a simple API for composing
mails, and we'd have a pretty sharp setup.  On many machines, it would
just call gnome-send-mail, which might just call sendmail, and work.  In
other instances, it would use a backend or evolution.  The API can allow
the application to identify itself to the backend, so the user can put
in various simplistic (and non-secure) access controls or options.

For example, say application A wants to send a precomposed mail and
doesn't require user modification.  The app uses the API to send the
mail.  The user has configured the system to always ask her approval
before sending mail (in case of malicious and/or broken applications),
so the sytem knows to popup a dialog identifying the app sending the
mail, the recipients, the subject, and provide a button to review the
entire mail contents.

Would be pretty useful, I think.

> 
> This is an area that needs work.
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-- 
Sean Middleditch <elanthis awesomeplay com>
AwesomePlay Productions, Inc.