[prev in list] [next in list] [prev in thread] [next in thread] 

List:       kde-devel
Subject:    Re: CORBA in mail clients (was Re: CORBA Book)
From:       Christian Esken <c.esken () cityweb ! de>
Date:       1999-04-09 18:14:12
[Download RAW message or body]

On Thu, 08 Apr 1999 Rik Hemsley wrote:
>As a complete idiot (In the village where I live, I am indeed the
>village idiot), I don't understand CORBA and probably won't for a long
>while.
>
>Some people have asked me whether my mail client (Empath) will support
>CORBA.
>
>Thing is, I don't know what CORBA would be useful for.

Distributed components ... great stuff :-)

>I know you can embed bits of your app in other apps. Great, but do you
>really want to read your mail from konqueror or use the mail client's
>compose widget in KWord ? And do you want to see mail notifications in
>KWord's statusbar ?

Donīt think about the GUI for now - Corba is a means to provide/share
SERVICES amongst applications. Really useful would be if Empath offers
his SERVICES to other applications. Services I can think of are
- send out a mail (e.g. mail a kword document)
- retrieve mails
- show mails
- Mail Folder access (list folders, list entries, get mail headers and body,
   search in mail bodys, ...)

This would make writing helper applications much more easy. No need for
any little tool to know the internal folder format of Empath.

Think for example when one wants to write a tool to migrate from some
mail program with real strange folder format.

Another application profiting could be a generic folder manager that can
access both mail and news folders - and then can do special searching
operations on these folders.

Empath itself could profit from a spell checking component.

And so on and so on. I compiled this list just on the fly - I am pretty sure
there are many more advantages possible.




>Actually, I can see that KWord doesn't have your email/reply-to
>addresses, and doesn't know your (supposedly system-wide) settings for
>sending mail etc, but these could be gleaned from the Empath's rc file.

No! This would be another service! Just offer a "lookup mail adresses"
Service - or a CORBA-fied kab would do this service.


>Could someone please give me a brief rundown on what CORBA would mean
>for my client, what I should be thinking about doing and who I should be
>designing so that life is made easier when I come to having to do this.

Hopefully this helped a bit.
BTW: Torben has placed some CORBAfied tutorial applications in the CVS.
Just take a look.

  Christian

-- 
Is Unix ready for the desktop? See http://www.kde.org

The                              Christian Esken
|/  Desktop                      KDE Developer
|\  Environment                  esken@kde.org

KDE - The net transparent free Unix Desktop for everyone

[prev in list] [next in list] [prev in thread] [next in thread]