[dev] Proposal for changes to Vilma

[Ben Klang]

Hello All,

I have recently taken over maintenance of Vilma, Horde's Email  
account manager module.  While creating the Qmail-LDAP driver for  
Vilma I came across a couple limitations.  This email is regarding a  
proposal to change the user management functionality of Vilma.  If  
you don't use Vilma feel free to ignore it.

The limitation that is most pressing is the one-size-fits-all  
approach to email aliases (known in Vilma as Virtual Addresses).  I  
want to split Virtual Addresses up into two categories: Aliases and  
Groups & Forwards.

Aliases:
The aliases would be just that: An existing user would have any  
number of other email addresses aliased to the account.  Example:
ben at alkaloid.net <-- real account
bklang at alkaloid.net <-- alias
vilma at alkaloid.net <-- alias
Each alias has exactly one "real" account to which it is mapped.

Groups and Forwards:
Groups and Forwards may sound disparate but when you think about the  
respective capabilities they are the same except that usually a Group  
has multiple target addresses while a Forward typically has just one.

Forwards are exactly like regular accounts except that they have been  
configured to foward mail to an offsite address.  Because forwards  
are otherwise regular accounts they can have aliases applied to them.

A group is a single address which forwards to many addresses.  It can  
also have aliases applied.  A group is really a Forward to multiple  
destinations.


The changes necessary to implement this will require significant  
changes to Vilma.  I have browsed through the sources for the  
Maildrop, SQL and IMAP Admin drivers and it doesn't appear like they  
do very much in terms of actually implementing Virtual addresses.   
The SQL driver is the only one that stores that information.  Even  
then it is stored in the Horde's database by default which makes it  
seem unlikely to me that it's actually integrated into a mailserver  
somewhere.  However I may be wrong and I wanted to solicit feedback  
from potential users before I began making these changes.

Longer term I would like to investigate merging any remaining  
unimplemented functionality from Vacation and Forwards into Vilma.  I  
have not yet looked at what that will involve.

I welcome any thoughts.

/BAK/
-- 
Ben Klang
Alkaloid Networks
bklang at alkaloid.net
404.475.4850
http://projects.alkaloid.net