[Python-ideas] New imaplib implementation for Python 3.2+ standard library

[Bill Janssen]

Maxim Khitrov <max at mxcrypt.com> wrote:

> The same repository also contains the library code and an example
> script that you can run if you have access to an IMAP4 server:
> 
> http://hg.mxcrypt.com/python/imaplib2/

I took a look at this.  Nice work!  Impressive list of extensions
implemented.

The first thing to ask is, does it pass the (minimal) test suite in
Lib/test/test_imaplib.py?  Or is it too different?

The code seems to be not quite in compliance with PEP 8.  If you're
aiming at the stdlib you should probably fix that.

I tend to think one of the larger missing pieces of imap4lib is the lack
of a higher-level interface.  I've used imap4lib for a couple of
projects, and I think that if I hadn't already had the experience of
implementing my own IMAP server in Python, I wouldn't have done that;
I'd have used a package like getmail instead.  There's a lot of
experience with IMAP necessary to use imap4lib.

Looking at your example.py, that still seems to be the case.  One thing
you might consider is implementing a subclass of "mailbox.Mailbox" which
provides that missing higher-level interface to IMAP4.

Bill