Actually the way that I'm currently thinking is developing a webmail interface, and basically setting up the expectations of "Get a list of all my mail", "Delete mail", "Store this mail here" etc. Then develop the underlying processes to handle it. In that manner it gives people the option of adding what every type of processes they want to read the mail. I would suggesting looking at POP3/IMAP support first since there is quite a bit of code out there already that can be at the process layer.
I think this might be a good approach and give quite a bit of flexability, while being a good base for people to expand on give an interface to the mail display and allow intergration into the rest of the system.
With the current webmail on both 3.x and 4.x in a state of "flux" and I'm more than willing to start attacking the problem. I would just like to start approaching the problem in a manner that people would find useful.
I also think have a good approach to offering webmail (which is becoming an increasing more desired feature from my perspective) I would like to move OpenACS's webmail to (hopefully) something that seems a bit more intergrated, functional, and easier to setup.
For the most part, I think people will already have mail servers and POP3/IMAP access and bring mail into the other features of OpenACS might be helpful in the "community marketing" thoughts that have been discussed lately.
It seems that this thread has been helpful in opening the dicussion about webmail: what people want, approaches, ideas. Now we just have to continue to go forward and hopefully develop something useful.
