The Java Mail Reader Project Notebook

Winter Quarter 1996
1/19/96

Document Author:

Project Sponsors:

The Just Another Version of Anarchy Team:

Brice Wilson (Manager/Programmer)
Jay Bredenberg (Architect)
Aaron Sims (Manager/Architect)
John Stevens (Programmer)
Joel Furnsinn (Technical Writer)

1.0 Project Description

The idea behind this project is to build a mail reader that will function independently of the platform it is being used on. Ideally, the only thing that the user will need to run this mail reader is a browser capable of using Java applets. The user should be able to go to any computer available to him and, given a Java capable browser, read his mail.

This mail reader should also allow the user to organize his mail in an orderly way. We propose to allow the user to be able to sort his mail into multiple folders, and allow him to move his mail between the folders as he wishes.

In addition, because many files that are sent over the network are not simply text files, we propose to include a way to handle files in the MIME Internet standard format. Although what the extent of this support will be has not yet been determined, some mechanism for the handling of these files will be available.

Finally, we wish to make our mail reader original. We want to distinguish it from the other readers already out there and try to create an original format for it. Although this may not be possible, after all there's only so much you can do with mail, we will certainly try to create something original.

This mail reader will be built on an existing toolkit called JavaIMAP which implements the Interactive Mail Access Protocol (IMAP) version 4. JavaIMAP will provide the direct interface to the mail server, so we will not have to worry about this aspect of the project.

Last Modified 2/9/96 -- Joel Furnsinn