Player Associations Archive

Problem:
The SWG email interface lacks many options, especially when it comes to sorting sorting messages in folders, managing identities, and archiving them.

Idea:
The built-in

/mailSave

command archives all emails into textfiles. Building an application that organizes the email so you have a better possibility to organize and work with it. I worked on some ideas how a thing like that can be implemented and what functions can be implemented.

Desired functionality:

1. enable the use of folders to sort emails
   
2. enable the use of an addressbook to collect ingame contact names and add extra meta-data to it (like RealLife email address, real name, ICQ number or whatever). that addressbook could be synced with the friends list eventually.
   
3. give the opportunity to read emails out of game (for example to plan what to do or to make the management of alternative characters easier)
   

Possible implementations:

1. a web-based application so it can be integrated in guild websites
   Advantage: easy to run and to write (I already have a kinda working prototype based on PHP5)
   Disadvantage: people might have a problem to setup a Webserver on their computer
   
   
2. a standalone application with a GUI (graphical user interface) that can be run on each person's own computer
   Advantage: More complex to write
   Disadvantage: hard task to make it platform independent (which would be very useful for people like me who usually use Linux )
   
   
3. wrap the emails to a mailserver so everyone can use his/her favourite email program (Thunderbird, Kmail, Outlook) to work with the emails
   Advantage: quite easy to use because people know their email program, and a very efficient way to work with it
   Disadvantage: security is a very important issue then
   

Please tell me any ideas you might have concerning this thing. Did I miss any important features? Would you want any special feature added? I'm open for suggestions.

Post in this thread or send me a forum PM, an email to tante(AT)the-gay-bar.com or messages to my ICQ account (81510866) or my MSN (thanatos(at)gambit.ath.cx).

The software I'm gonna write will be open source and free so each of you will be able to work on it to improve it as soon as I built the base.

Thanks for any input. And try to bring a few people in who would be interested in this

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Problem:
The SWG email interface lacks many options, especially when it comes to sorting sorting messages in folders, managing identities, and archiving them.

Idea:
The built-in

/mailSave

command archives all emails into textfiles. Building an application that organizes the email so you have a better possibility to organize and work with it. I worked on some ideas how a thing like that can be implemented and what functions can be implemented.

Desired functionality:

1. enable the use of folders to sort emails
   
2. enable the use of an addressbook to collect ingame contact names and add extra meta-data to it (like RealLife email address, real name, ICQ number or whatever). that addressbook could be synced with the friends list eventually.
   
3. give the opportunity to read emails out of game (for example to plan what to do or to make the management of alternative characters easier)
   

Possible implementations:

1. a web-based application so it can be integrated in guild websites
   Advantage: easy to run and to write (I already have a kinda working prototype based on PHP5)
   Disadvantage: people might have a problem to setup a Webserver on their computer
   
   
2. a standalone application with a GUI (graphical user interface) that can be run on each person's own computer
   Advantage: More complex to write
   Disadvantage: hard task to make it platform independent (which would be very useful for people like me who usually use Linux )
   
   
3. wrap the emails to a mailserver so everyone can use his/her favourite email program (Thunderbird, Kmail, Outlook) to work with the emails
   Advantage: quite easy to use because people know their email program, and a very efficient way to work with it
   Disadvantage: security is a very important issue then
   

Please tell me any ideas you might have concerning this thing. Did I miss any important features? Would you want any special feature added? I'm open for suggestions.

Post in this thread or send me a forum PM, an email to tante(AT)the-gay-bar.com or messages to my ICQ account (81510866) or my MSN (thanatos(at)gambit.ath.cx).

The software I'm gonna write will be open source and free so each of you will be able to work on it to improve it as soon as I built the base.

Thanks for any input.

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That's what I posted in my brainstorm thread. Please come in and join if you'd like that thing to happen!

Thanks!

May have a problem with long loading times!

The long loading times are exactly why I built the prototype.

My roommate's computer is not that good so his full email box mad /mailSave very slow.

If you /mailSave all and, add them to a system like I suggested and always do a /mailSave when you log out it is very fast. And you don't need any SWG_client for it that uses 750 MB ram

Seems like a very interesting idea.

I think you nailed the most important features and I'd probably keep it basic for its initial version and then add in new features once it's basic abilities are up and running.

As far as the program goes, honestly, an independant program for each system is probably the best method to get people interested, though a web version might do it as well. I'd try for both if it's at all possible. Would probably be best to begin with an executionable and then work inf eatures to export the information to a web server or something to that effect.

I'm certainly interested to see what you come up with.

Message Edited by Rothin on 08-15-2005 08:06 PM

It cpmes tp me how we take the in mail system for advantage take heed of it while you can =D

You might want to take a look at http://www.swgmail.com/

Hmmm, didn't know the software, will have a look at it! Thanks for the link.

Looked at the link and while those filters for emails are definetly a neat idea, I think it lacks some things ...

I wrote a tool similar to what you are describing. Basically it was meant to browse the mails stored on your hdd. Besides the basic sort options (by sender, subject and so on) it offers an additional full-text search.
Contact management hasn't been a topic so far, but I integrated some other features like evaluation of sales (with some graphs and statistics, e.g. turnover per vendor and item) and bank tips.
As it is written in Java, it runs on any platform where a Java runtime environment is available for.
If anyone is interested, send me a PM with you email adress and I will send it to you (less than 1 MB in total)...

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falke2203 wrote:
I wrote a tool similar to what you are describing. Basically it was meant to browse the mails stored on your hdd. Besides the basic sort options (by sender, subject and so on) it offers an additional full-text search.
Contact management hasn't been a topic so far, but I integrated some other features like evaluation of sales (with some graphs and statistics, e.g. turnover per vendor and item) and bank tips.
As it is written in Java, it runs on any platform where a Java runtime environment is available for.
If anyone is interested, send me a PM with you email adress and I will send it to you (less than 1 MB in total)...

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Did you import the emails into some kind of storage file or did you just work on the file system?

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Tante wrote:

Did you import the emails into some kind of storage file or did you just work on the file system?

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Working on the file system. All mails are cached during startup...