I started a new project called TinyMail named after my girlfriend (Tinne). The plan is to create an E-mail client designed for mobile devices like the Nokia 770. The chances of ever achieving finishing a usable tool are small to zero, but … I guess it’s fun. Which is why I started nevertheless.
What I did so far is creating interfaces (a lot like what I did with that TreeView demo of last week). At this moment, I’m basically preparing all the objects and interfaces.
If you’re interested, please contact me.
You can follow the developments and latest code in this temporary subversion repository. Sure is whatever-forge cooler and whateverer but heck, it’s just a temporary location anyway. And the chances of somebody joining early in the game are extremely small.
The idea is the make use of the proxy programming technique, use an existing library like camel in the implementations of the real subjects and attempt to be as correct as possible in terms of design pattern usage. So that basically means that probably every type will have an interface, and that I’m going to try using for-c-programmers crazy programming principles and techniques. I know this is more or less nuts if you use gobject (checkout the gtktreemodel and gtktreestore code if you want to know how to create and work with interfaces in gobject). So be it.
Here’s some pointers to interesting information:
- ETable, the header-view component for Evolution
- Camel, a generic messaging library being used by Evolution
- Some idea’s for maemo’s osso-email
- Sylpheed, a lightweight e-mail client
The libtinymail and libtinymailui are components that will sit in between for example a library like camel and the user interface. They will take care of the high level caching (making sure that only visible things are abusing the memory — i.e. the proxy technique –). A lot like the models that can be used with ETable.
Note that no, a compiled version of whatever is in the repository a.t.m. will not do anything useful at this moment. It’s way to early for that. I might finished it in a few hundred years. You can, of course, join and help me.