[Zope3-dev] Re: [Zope3-checkins] CVS: Zope3/lib/python/Zope/App/OFS/Services/SmtpService/Views - __init__.py:1.1 configure.zcml:1.1

[Guido van Rossum]

> > >     SR> I really, really think an SMTP server is important, if Zope
> > >     SR> wants to grow 10x...also think of Mailman 3... We need to
> > >     SR> get away of just thinking about HTTP and friends...

> Guido van Rossum wrote:
> > Um, what would you do with an SMTP server integrated in Zope?  Does
> > Zope really have to become a Polish army knife?

[Martijn F]
> It would be nice to be able to send email to objects in some applications
> though. (object publishing to email) 
> 
> Of course there's a bloat risk, but Zope 2 is already a multiple protocol
> server (http, XML-RPC, Web DAV, FTP), and that's proven very useful.

Hm.  I really don't think that using email as a way for *programs* to
communicate is a good idea -- the protocol is too braindead.  And for
*people* to talk to an object, a web browser seems to be a better
solution than typing commands in an email message.  Email is for
human-to-human communication or occasionally for program-to-human
communication; it's no good for human-to-program communication.

Do you really want to create e.g. a mailing list manager that accepts
commands via email, like mailman or listserv, using Zope?  And if you
do, does it really make sense to have the SMTP server integrated in
the Zope server, rather than having the mail piped into a little
helper program that parses the mail looking for commands and then
makes some calls to Zope (e.g. using XMLRPC)?

> It'd be nice if we could offload this kind of stuff to frameworks like
> twisted that try to be very good at exactly this area, though.
> But that'd only take off if it were very easy to set up such a combination.

Mixing Twisted with Zope seems a while off still.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)