For a while I wanted to be able to get programmatic access to my email store in Evolution, just like it is possible to have programmatic access to the contacts and calendar through the Evolution Data Server.
The advantages of using IMAP as the protocol to talk to Evolution are simple: I can use any existing IMAP client library, or any other IMAP client to connect to my Evolution store. The protocol is well known, documented and the large ecosystem of IMAP clients makes it a natural feature.
There is also an application that I have in mind for it. I keep all of my email in Evolution, I download all of my email into my local hard disk so I can have all my information with me even when I am disconnected from the net. This means I can always check patches, review comments, discussions even when I am disconnected or with poor network connectivity.
But when I go on vacation, I do not want to bring my laptop or Evolution with me. Instead I end up using internet cafes to read my gmail and all of the other email addresses end up in Novell's server. Novell provides a convenient Web UI that I can use to read my email.
But the problem is that I end up reading emails twice: once in the road with the web UIs, and another time when I get back home and import all my email into Evolution.
By having Evolution expose an IMAP interface, I could use any IMAP client on the road, or ssh into my box and use mutt to read from the same email store that Evolution is keeping track of.
Posted on 17 Dec 2008