[This idea is still under development, but comments are welcome on this page.]

News

So, it's here now. ReleaseEarlyReleaseOften. It's working for me, but it needs some docs and some people to play with it. Anyone interested?

-- LesOrchard - 01 Mar 2002

Introduction

I receive fewer items of email than news items I manage to skim in a day, yet I never seem to get around to skimming or reading all of the email. So, it might be useful to treat mail as news items, turn my mail folders into personally syndicated weblogs.

MailToRSS will merge my incoming email stream with my news stream. Produce RSS from mailbox indexes, provide links to read mail items, provide forms with which to reply to email ala weblog comments.

Download

• imap-rss-01mar2002.tar.gz: MailToRSS web application (as of 01-Mar-2002)

Details

I really need to write out complete docs for this thing, simple as it is. But, until then, here are some brief sketchy points:

• Implemented in Python
• Uses the Caffinate framework

• ImapRss? component
  • Configuration
    • imap.conf: Sample ImapRss? config file
  • Web Methods
    • index.cgi?method=rss&mailbox=cocoa-dev&msgs=15
      • Produces an RSS feed of 15 newest messages in mailbox cocoa-dev
    • index.cgi?method=read&mailbox=cocoa-dev&msg=45
      • Displays message 45 in mailbox cocoa-dev

Running thoughts / References

• Somehow abstract/precis list digests?
  • Chop off management info, show list of messages
• Abstract other mail messages
• Auto-digest lists that aren't in digest mode?
  • Chunk newest 10 together?
• How to link back for reply? (mailto: ?)
• Interface directly to an IMAP account? Support mbox / MH?

• Yahoo! Groups messages RSS - ie. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/radio-userland/messages?rss=1&viscount=15
• MailMan? RSS Feeds - http://taint.org/mmrss/

-- LesOrchard - 01 Mar 2002

Attachment	Action	Size	Date	Who	Comment
imap.conf	manage	0.5 K	01 Mar 2002 - 06:56	LesOrchard	Sample ImapRss? config file
imap-rss-01mar2002.tar.gz	manage	5.6 K	01 Mar 2002 - 07:04	LesOrchard	MailToRSS web application (as of 01-Mar-2002)