Hi Jerry,

On Thu, 18 May 2000 23:37:46 EDT JArchibald at aol.com wrote:
>I finally got a chance to look at the package (suffering with a knock out 
>cold for last two weeks). 

Sorry to hear that - hope you are feeling better.

>The first question that came to mind is "What is the repository?" (when I 
>execute 'EekMailClientWindow open') -- is this some mail that you've 
>collected, does it duplicate the Squeak mailing list (there were a lot of 
>things that I couldn't find, so I guessed it was a selection), or is it 
>something else. I assume this is running from a machine of yours as a server.

It's about 15,000 messages from Jul 98 through Apr 00 from the Squeak list. It should be just about all the messages from that period.

>If I were to want to build my own repository, or an interface to mine or 
>someone else's repository (such a Georg Gollman's), what are starting points 
>in the code to begin to grok this? Similarly, how do I understand your 
>repository (structure, access, etc.)?

A good starting point would be EekMailFiles and its subclasses, especially EekMailServerFiles. The #open and #close methods will highlight some of the important parts, particularly the 3 files: message text, index and folders. To use other data, you could convert that data to the format required by these files or change the methods referencing these files to talk to something else. You could, for example, use some of the code from EekMailServerFiles>>getNewMessagesWithAction: to import messages from elsewhere.

>The package looks great, though large. You wouldn't have an anatomy guide to 
>the code, by any chance. :-)  UML? :-)  Notes? :-)

Not really. I'm a big fan of browse and inspect. If you start up either the client or the server and open an explorer on the eekMail window, you can dig into any part of it. If there's something specific I can help with, let me know.

>Two minor problems I ran into: (a) I couldn't execute EekMailServerWindows 
>open; gives a walk-back (looks like it is not creating needed files), and 

That was a recently introduced bug (I was focused on getting the client side out where people could try it out). If you create a folder called 'eekMailDB' in your Squeak directory, it will be able to create the files. 

>(b) 
>I couldn't Collapse the Mail Client window; gives a walk-back 
>(BobsPluggableTextMorph(ComponentLikeModel)>>delete is objecting to a #nil 
>slotName).

That's just one of those things I never got around to fixing (I just never collapse it). I actually haven't fixed it partly because it reminds me I want to understand that slotName business better some day.

Cheers,
Bob