Re: Writing a GNOME mail client.

["Michael Rogers" <bastard_machine hotmail com>]

>I take it, your point is that you'd like to get your mail through any
>weird protocol whatsoever without having to care for it much.
>
>If there's been any general point to the few messages I've posted to
>this list then it is the suggestion to start from the desired user
>experience. The technology will fit into place later. Don't start 
>with protocols, plugins, whatever tech stuff. Instead start with 
>what you want to do with a system.
>
>So, let's see. Fundamentally, we'd like to receive and send message.
>What protocol they happen to travel by is a more or less accidental
>feature; ordinary users hardly like to care about it. Of course, this
>user experience has to be realized in some way and there protocols 
>will figure. And there using a plugin architecture is a proven 
>solution -- but a misbegotten one. One case in point is Netscape 
>Navigator. I've never tried to count the number of plugins available 
>for it, but there are a lot. So, you get each and every plugin you 
>need to watch the latest achievements in spiffy web design. But some 
>time later you realize that all those plugins don't help you one bit 
>if you want to use them outside of Netscape. Try to use a Netscape 
>plugin to put a shockwave animation into a spreadsheet, say. No way. 
>The spreadsheet developer could have implemented the Netscape plugin 
>interface and the X interface and the Y interface and yet another 
>interface. This starts to look as if it's the wrong way around. It's 
>really not an individual application's job to care for plugins. 
>Instead, let applications (or rather components) offer services and 
>depend on services. The wiring should be done by a general facility. 
>(Did I hear anyone say "OpenDoc"...;-))

 It should be possible to use CORBA to write reusable plugins. Any 
Gnome app which wanted to use a particular type of service (eg audio 
processing) could use plugins designed for a different app, provided 
the developers of the original app used a sensible, flexible 
interface definition.


 - Michael Rogers

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