[Zope] - Zope web-based mail?

[James Strickland]

On Sun, 3 Jan 1999, Ty Sarna wrote:

> I seem to recall someone mentioning that they were developing a
> web-based mail system (something like Hotmail) in Zope. Would someone
> please refresh my memory? Thanks.

If you're talking about an email-based call tracking system, that was me. 
We currently use a system I wrote as CGI scripts in Perl.  This system
includes a web form based mailer (ugly TEXTAREA and all!) which "forges"
the outgoing mail to be from a common support address with a call# tag so
that return mail is associated with the same call.  It's also possible to
reply using conventional mail clients. 

The problems are maintainability (although I haven't changed it for a year
now) and the fact that it doesn't handle MIME and is lacking a scalable
search function.  I also wanted to integrate it better with our customer
database.  Now that I'm a Python convert, I wanted to write the thing in
Python, which lead me to Bobo, which lead me to Zope. 

Zope initially had zero documentation on the product interface, though, so
I got nowhere and put it off.  Now I don't think I'm going to get to it
for at least a month or two (new release pressures...).  If any Zopistas
want to take this on I can certainly help with the design - I can give
sample screenshots (HTML) from the existing system and describe the
overall structure.  It's really pretty simple.  Of course, jitterbug is
also free so you can use that for a model if you want.  My system was
written slightly earlier and is, of course, Infinitely Better. :-)  :-) 
(I've really only looked at Jitterbug enough to see that it does mostly
the same thing...it looks like it also lacks support for MIME and a good
search interface.)

--
James Strickland
Perforce Software