Re: Re: IMAP interface to Mathematica
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg61755] Re: [mg61708] Re: IMAP interface to Mathematica
- From: Chris Chiasson <chris.chiasson at gmail.com>
- Date: Fri, 28 Oct 2005 03:25:38 -0400 (EDT)
- References: <djn8lc$l3n$1@smc.vnet.net> <200510270901.FAA19351@smc.vnet.net>
- Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com
Thanks to jwz, we now have proof that Mathematica is a useful tool :-] On 10/27/05, Steven T. Hatton <hattons at globalsymmetry.com> wrote: > Yves Papegay wrote: > > > Has anyone around some experience in using Mathematica for connecting to > > an IMAP mail server and for automatic processing of mails ? > > > > I plan/need to work on it and I would like to avoid unnecessary effort. > > > > Thanks, > > > > Yves > > If I were you, I would break the problem down into separate pieces. > Mathematica (IMO) should know nothing about email, per se. It should > simply know how to handle a request to process a particular type of data. > There are plenty of tool kits for creating IMAP clients which you can use > to create the IMAP side of the interface. Figure out what you want > Mathematica to do with the data, and how to provide the data to Mathematica > in a friendly form (strip off all the header unnecessary header stuff > (unless that's what you are processing) and send just the body, or relevant > part of the body to Mathematica. I'm sure there are tools which can take a > typical mail message and represent it as an object (C++, or lesser). That > should enable you to grab only what you need from the message without doing > a lot of your own coding. > > I will note that this situation provides anticdotal evidence supporting > > http://catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/Z/Zawinskis-Law.html > > Zawinski's Law > > ?Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs > which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can.? Coined by Jamie > Zawinski (who called it the ?Law of Software Envelopment?) to express his > belief that all truly useful programs experience pressure to evolve into > toolkits and application platforms (the mailer thing, he says, is just a > side effect of that). It is commonly cited, though with widely varying > degrees of accuracy. > -- > "Philosophy is written in this grand book, The Universe. ... But the book > cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language... > in which it is written. It is written in the language of mathematics, ...; > without which wanders about in a dark labyrinth." The Lion of Gaul > > -- http://chrischiasson.com/contact/chris_chiasson
- References:
- Re: IMAP interface to Mathematica
- From: "Steven T. Hatton" <hattons@globalsymmetry.com>
- Re: IMAP interface to Mathematica