IDLE again

[Dominic LoBue]

On Thu, Dec 3, 2009 at 9:58 AM,  <exarkun at twistedmatrix.com> wrote:
> On 05:00 pm, jgoerzen at complete.org wrote:
>>
>> Dominic LoBue wrote:
>>>
>>> I am willing to do the legwork myself on this one to get it working,
>>> though I could use your assistance in determining the best approach to
>>> take.
>>
>> Great!
>>
>> I suspect that the easiest options would be:
>>
>> 1) Identify and fix the bugs from imaplib2
>>
>> 2) Add IDLE support to imaplib (or use imaplib to provide it)
>>
>> imaplib2 proved to be a massive user experience problem.  I don't like
>> the idea of being "buggy by default" (defaulting to imaplib2 with an
>> option to revert to imaplib), nor do I like a "more bugs please, but
>> also enable IDLE" sort of option (imaplib default with imaplib2 as an
>> option).  Enabling IDLE shouldn't cause people to have trouble.
>>>
>>> My other thought is to add IDLE support to the twisted imap client
>>> library, and switch offlineimap over to twisted.
>>
>> I attempted that conversion myself some years ago, and had it mostly
>> working, but it was terrible to maintain.  There also seem to be
>> questions about the long-term viability of Twisted; I have heard that
>> they intend to never port it to Python 3.
>
> Aside from there being questions about the long-term viability of Python 3
> (wink), you can read about Twisted's Python 3 porting plans here:
>
>  http://twistedmatrix.com/trac/ticket/2484
>
> and some more general thoughts on Python 3 porting on stackoverflow:
>
>  http://bit.ly/6hWqYU
>
> The short version is that it'll happen when it's sufficiently useful.
>
> If we can momentarily pretend that the Python 3 question is answered, then
> I'll just toss in that I'd be quite interested to see offlineimap use
> Twisted for it's protocol needs.
>
> I know that twisted.mail.imap4 has issues (I recently filed a pretty major
> ticket against it, in fact: <http://twistedmatrix.com/trac/ticket/4124>).
>  I'm not trying to suggest that switching to Twisted's APIs will be a snap.
>  I don't even have a good idea about whether it would be easier than fixing
> the imaplib2 issues or adding the necessary features to imaplib (although I
> do *feel* like imaplib is so low-level that, overall, using Twisted's APIs
> would have to be an improvement).
>
> I do know that Twisted development is active, maintenance is ongoing, and if
> there is interest in improving the IMAP4 code, I'm here to help with the
> process.  So if you still decide not to use Twisted, do it for reasons other
> than those. :)
>
> I'll go back to lurking now.
>
> Jean-Paul
>

Jean-Paul,

Your offer is much appreciated, thank you!

Just to give you fair warning: I've never worked with twisted before.
I am very interested in learning however. If you're cool with
answering some of my questions and showing me the ropes though, I
totally accept your offer!

I'm willing to put in the time required to porting OfflineIMAP over to
Twisted if someone can smooth over Twisted's learning curve for me.

-- 
Dominic LoBue