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I did a project like this a few years ago and here are my takeaways: 1. Building on top of IMAP is very difficult. It's not a technology that is really designe

by buf 12y ago

I did a project like this a few years ago and here are my takeaways: 1. Building on top of IMAP is very difficult. It's not a technology that is really designed for the mobile world of today (e.g. streaming, sockets for chat) 2. Threading is a bitch. The old folder tree layout is formidable. ---------------- That said, it's so cool to see something like this in the wild. As an engineer, I would've used this as a boilerplate for my project years ago, and it would've saved me literally six months of efforts. Kudos to this. It's gods work. Free startup idea: Use this to help larger businesses collaborate more efficiently (much like if Yammer and GTasks had a baby).

austenallred 12y ago
It seems to me that this is the startup idea, built on top of this tech.
- buf 12y ago
  Seemed to me that it wasn't particularly meant for internal business comms. Just random comms.
  - askura 12y ago
    Would be a good idea to market it for those two verticals.
jtmoulia 12y ago
1. IMAP is powerful and ubiquitous, but it does put a lot of work on the client: implementing a parser, caching values, correctly handling unsolicited messages. Switchboard tries to carry some of this boilerplate weight. 2. Yes! We still have to work this into Switchboard, but conversations in the JMAP (http://jmap.io http://jmap.io) spec give an idea of how it will be implemented.
angersock 12y ago
Interesting article about message threading: http://www.jwz.org/doc/threading.html http://www.jwz.org/doc/threading.html
- makeshifthoop 12y ago
  That article is a classic, and is used by most people I've talked to implement threading if they can't rely on the IMAP server supporting the THREAD extension [1]. However, it also serves as an example of some of the complexity that clients are expected to handle to provide a modern email experience. That algorithm isn't trivial, and reimplementing it with every client is expensive in development time, and error-prone. As mentioned in a sibling comment, the Switchboard server's roadmap includes making it thread aware, leaving Switchboard clients lean. [1] http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5256 http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5256

by buf 12y ago

austenallred 12y ago

It seems to me that this is the startup idea, built on top of this tech.

buf 12y ago
Seemed to me that it wasn't particularly meant for internal business comms. Just random comms.
- askura 12y ago
  Would be a good idea to market it for those two verticals.

jtmoulia 12y ago

1. IMAP is powerful and ubiquitous, but it does put a lot of work on the client: implementing a parser, caching values, correctly handling unsolicited messages. Switchboard tries to carry some of this boilerplate weight. 2. Yes! We still have to work this into Switchboard, but conversations in the JMAP (http://jmap.io http://jmap.io) spec give an idea of how it will be implemented.

angersock 12y ago

Interesting article about message threading: http://www.jwz.org/doc/threading.html http://www.jwz.org/doc/threading.html

makeshifthoop 12y ago
That article is a classic, and is used by most people I've talked to implement threading if they can't rely on the IMAP server supporting the THREAD extension [1]. However, it also serves as an example of some of the complexity that clients are expected to handle to provide a modern email experience. That algorithm isn't trivial, and reimplementing it with every client is expensive in development time, and error-prone. As mentioned in a sibling comment, the Switchboard server's roadmap includes making it thread aware, leaving Switchboard clients lean. [1] http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5256 http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5256