Forum OpenACS Development: Response to webmail status?

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Posted by Don Baccus on
Well ... requiring Python's not nearly as bad as requring Oracle SQLJ, that's for sure!

My major concern is complexity.  Python's a great language.  At the moment to understand everything in an OpenACS 4 release you need to be able to read: Perl, SQL, Tcl, the templating system/.adp. That's one language less than ACS 4 Classic (which tossed Java into the mix).  Perl's only used for a couple of external scripts, so you can heavily customize an OpenACS 4 installation without knowing it.  But a Python webmail package would require one to know it if you were to want to customize it.  Also ... not only do you have the problem of there being no good GPL'd template system but you'd be forcing folks to learn *two* templating systems to effectively customize the look-and-feel of their site.

So I'm not thrilled with the notion of raising the bar in this way.

On the other hand, integration with the OpenACS 4 datamodel would certainly make it more attractive than an independent, third-party webmail package...