Email Interoperability and Innovation

Notes from Dave Crocker's talk

Feb 10 2005

Email system architecture

Architecture draft (search on IETF site if this is supplanted by a later draft version)

There are a lot more pieces in the email architecture than most of us are aware of and these pieces have a big effect on how new features like email signatures work.

Not all of the pieces are software (e.g. message transfer agents); some are people -- list mediators come between senders and recipients on list traffic. People who forward or reply to messages act as mediators to the original message.

Innovation in The Bat!

• From Moldovia...
• Has templates but not scripts
• Differentiates "sender" and "from" which most don't do
• Mails can have a "sticky bit" (parking) which save you from accidentally deleting the mail.

Templates

• Can use variables in templates
• no real programming, just fields like "current date" and "sender

Threads

• Treats threads as more than just a view, but even as an object
• for example you can delete a whole thread, move it, etc.
• However a client could go even further and allow user to say that a thread isn't interesting any more, or have an even higher concept like "conversation"
• There are problems with how threading is implemented -- compliance is poor across the set of email clients.
• Search doesn't seem to replace threads as a method of finding and working with information

Format

• The Bat! uses a mail storage mechanism that stores multiple messages in one file
• The format is mostly like unix mail but the separators between email include binary information!
• This means that email archived from The Bat! cannot be viewed by any other application as separate emails.
• Lesson is to use real archive formats to save data -- another example given of 2002 electronic tax returns which can only be opened by one vresion-year of one software product.

Pocomail

New mail

• Pocomail tracks both unread messages and folders containing new messages.
• Folders containing new messages appear in yellow
• user can decide which folders to show as tabs (as well as appearing on the "sidebar") and these also show yellow==new

Threading

• Some support for threading
• Partial display of threading??

Preview window

• Dave views almost all his mail in the so-called "preview window", not by calling up a separate window
• Pocomail's preview window comes with text size changers and quick buttons to remove formatting, view headers, etc -- all without leaving preview.

Spam

• Pocomail's spam filter is there and built-in with good/bad toggles
• Too bad it's locked in -- wouldn't it be great if one could drop in a better spam filter