RE: visions

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email protected] 
> [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Paul Smith
> Sent: Thursday, February 26, 2004 10:28 AM
> To: '[email protected]'
> Subject: Re: visions

[snip]

> Maybe this is off-topic, but I'm not so sure. Maybe 'next 
> generation email' 
> would not be email at all. Why MUST it be?
> 
> Having things web based would actually meet a LOT of the 
> end-user criteria..

This depends on what you mean by "web based". If you mean handling
messages using a (basically) HTML based interface, then one problem
today is efficiency. I want to be able to read my email as fast as I did
on good ol' Mutt, which at least at my university's webmail is
impossible (even though both interfaces communicate with the same IMAP
server).

(I tend to think of mail-NG as something of an all-embracing protocol
for message interchange, with support for negotiating when, where, and
how the receiver should receive the message, semantic tagging of some
kind to avoid today's lousy display control scheme, authentication &
authorization possibilities, rigid but modular standards, etc. If this
can be realized, efficiency is secondary and can be handled by employing
partial downloads and per-receiver prioritizing schemes.)

Yours sincerely,
-- 
Victor Engmark
Quid quid latine dictum sit, altum viditar - What is said in latin,
sounds profound