X-Git-Url: http://www.git.stargrave.org/?a=blobdiff_plain;f=Documentation%2Fdesign_notes.txt;h=d7313cb6a60c7a895bc2724528feadfc62b531da;hb=6a414a4087a59ad8c62cbef30984632ea31ced23;hp=9666664cf9c94cf95e43236e5824882e710e3522;hpb=394558721dd0c27f71fc6605c009ea07d37ccee8;p=public-inbox.git

diff --git a/Documentation/design_notes.txt b/Documentation/design_notes.txt
index 9666664c..d7313cb6 100644
--- a/Documentation/design_notes.txt
+++ b/Documentation/design_notes.txt
@@ -1,5 +1,5 @@
-Design notes
-------------
+public-inbox design notes
+-------------------------
 
 Challenges to running normal mailing lists
 ------------------------------------------
@@ -14,7 +14,6 @@ confused users who cannot unsubscribe.
 
 Use existing infrastructure
 ---------------------------
-
 * public-inbox can coexist with existing mailing lists, any subscriber
   to the existing mailing list can begin delivering messages to
   public-inbox-mda(1)
@@ -35,7 +34,6 @@ Use existing infrastructure
 
 Why email?
 ----------
-
 * Freedom from proprietary services, tools and APIs.  Communicating with
   developers and users of Free Software should not rely on proprietary
   tools or services.
@@ -53,9 +51,9 @@ Why email?
   There is no need to ask the NSA for backups of your mail archives :)
 
 * git, one of the most widely-used version control systems, includes many
-  tools for for email: git-format-patch(1), git-send-email(1), git-am(1).
-  Furthermore, the development of git itself is based on the git mailing
-  list.
+  tools for for email, including: git-format-patch(1), git-send-email(1),
+  git-am(1), git-imap-send(1).  Furthermore, the development of git itself
+  is based on the git mailing list.
 
 * Email is already the de-facto form of communication in many Free Software
   communities..
@@ -66,7 +64,6 @@ Why email?
 
 Why git?
 --------
-
 * git is distributed and robust while being both fast and
   space-efficient with text data.  NNTP was considered, but does not
   support delta-compression and places no guarantees on data/transport
@@ -76,8 +73,19 @@ Why git?
   developers.  For non-developers it is packaged for all major GNU/Linux
   and *BSD distributions.  NNTP is not as widely-used nowadays.
 
+Why perl 5?
+-----------
+* Perl 5 is widely available on modern *nix systems with good a history
+  of backwards and forward compatibility.
+
+* git and SpamAssassin both use it, so it should be one less thing for
+  admins to install and waste disk space with.
+
 Laziness
 --------
+* Stick to dependencies available in Debian main, this should make it
+  easier for potential users to install, and easier for distro
+  maintainers to pick up.
 
 * A list server being turned into an SMTP spam relay and being
   blacklisted while an admin is asleep is scary.
@@ -98,11 +106,10 @@ Laziness
 
 * Avoids bikeshedding about web UI decisions, GUI-lovers can write their
   own GUI-friendly interfaces (HTML or native) based on public archives.
-  Maybe one day integrated MUAs will feature a built-in git protocol support!
+  Maybe one day integrated MUAs will feature built-in git protocol support!
 
 Web notes
 ---------
-
 * Getting users to install/run ssoma (or any new tool) is difficult.
   The web views must be easily read/cache/mirror-able.
 
@@ -115,6 +122,26 @@ Web notes
 * Raw text endpoint allows users to write client-side JS endpoints
   without hosting the data themselves (or on a different server).
 
+What sucks about public-inbox
+-----------------------------
+* Lack of push notification.  On the other hand, feeds seem popular.
+
+* some (mostly GUI) mail clients cannot set In-Reply-To headers
+  properly without the original message.
+
+Scalability notes
+-----------------
+Even with shallow clone, storing the history of large/busy mailing lists
+may place much burden on subscribers and servers.  However, having a
+single (or few) refs representing the entire history of a list is good
+for small lists since it's easier to lookup a message by Message-ID, so
+we want to avoid splitting refs with independent histories.
+
+ssoma will likely grow its own builtin ref rotation system based on
+message count (not rotating at fixed time intervals).  This would
+split the histories and require O(n) lookup time based on Message-ID,
+where `n' is the number of history splits.
+
 Copyright
 ---------
 Copyright 2013, Eric Wong <normalperson@yhbt.net> and all contributors.