i've done some further investigating today of the use of python with the openacs. my "wrangling" with the request processor was over fairly quickly (at least for simple interaction).
don, i agree that an integrated solution would be a much better approach, esp. one that unifies the template handling. as for complexity , i feel that programming imap w/ python would be much simpler and more maintainable than the alternatives.
in effort to solve the template issue, i did some more investigation of the ats (and the upvar hell that it is) and was able to integrate python with the ats (with a little more rp work). so python a based solution can also share the same templates that will be used throughout a site:)
i'd like to do some more testing of persistent imap connections and load testing, but i think that a python based webmail is definitely feasible. i don't think its going to nesc. be a single logon system, as most people don't keep won't have their acs passwords the same as their email accnt passwds, and afaik acs passwords aren't stored clear text.
i seriously dislike the approaches of using storing a users email on the server, mail systems like imap were designed for this type of usage. i don't see any reason to reinvent the wheel, by purposefully burdening the openacs with the complexities and overhead of user mail management and the implied restrictions on user access.
