http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com guidelines and check if your idea has been posted already! ]]> en-us Tue, 02-Dec-2008 00:00:00 UTC Tue, 02-Dec-2008 00:00:00 UTC QAPoll module http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/15943/
It would be nice to be able to start any mail client and get the same emails. With this, if you want to try a new client, you just start it and you can quickly see if it's good for you.

If you use different client for different accounts and don't want to share the emails (not common but it happens), you could simply create a new directory to save the mails. The backend would still be the unified one, but the directory to store the file would be different.

For the APIs and implementation, it have to be accepted by the teams of Evolution, Thunderbird and Kmail. It could be based on SQLite but it is also possible to write something more specific.

A common backend should not prevent the innovations and distinct features of mail clients. Any clients is free to add custom metadata, as long as those data are not stored is the common backend.


pros:
-share more code between those project
-ability to write a very optimized backend for email (useful in general but also for phones and other small devices)
-ability to write small useful apps independant of the mail client (notify how many new mail, update the inbox with small client, etc)
-huge improvement for backup
-simplify the indexation of mails with tracker/beagle/etc

cons:
-If you are the writer of a client that needs a lot of data that are not on the backend, you have to deal with two backends for the data. This problem is unlikely to exist (since all clients have nearly all the same features), but I a sure a lot of developers would think it is the case for their software because it is "special" ;)
-it has to be multiplatform, which is a pro for me but it also mean it is not trivial to implement

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