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List:       kmail-devel
Subject:    Re: auto-encrypt attachments: want to implement
From:       Florian Weber <Florian.Weber () pfaffenhofen ! de>
Date:       2001-08-15 9:33:25
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On Wednesday 15 August 2001 09:28, Michael Häckel wrote:
> > If You replace "sent" with "queued" in Ingo's sentence then the
> > problem disappears :-)
> No it doesn't. What, if you forward a mail with attachments and what if the
> file is already removed, before the composer window is closed?
> Also the files to attach are retrieved via a kioslave and it doesn't make
> sense to load the same file twice possible over a network.

Oh ... that's true, yes.

So, two problems:
a) attaching early wastes memory (e.g. inside the drafts folder),
   possibly also causing delays when opening that folder
b) attaching late risks attachment corruption by other programs

My proposal: 

When attaching a file
1. Copy to a file-system folder (not a kmail folder) and give it a unique ID 
as name
1b. possibly encrypt it already ?
2. Change the attachment data to not contain the file itself, but just the 
filename (which is unique)
3. On sending, *really* attach the file (and, perhaps, encrypt it).

I think it is absolutely neccessary to avoid b) - therefore not wasting space 
is not possible, as the attached file *must* be 'detached' from the original.
Keeping the copy in a file system folder will, however, reduce lost space to 
the amount absolutely neccessary and will keep processing times for the mail 
folder itself low (think: 20Mails with a 5MB attachment each). On sending, 
the overhead is basically that of a disk read operation if you discount 
ecnryption, which can be done earlier.

On second thought, perhaps this strategy could also be used for *incoming* 
mails. After all, why would I want to store files (=attachments) in a 
compound construct (mail folder... mainly mbox) when I can just as easy use 
the file system that was intended for this operation.

Wbr,
Florian
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