Email Invoices

[Derek Atkins]

linas at linas.org (Linas Vepstas) writes:

>> IMHO the hard part is generating the MIME message and including the
>> PDF (or HTML) of the invoice.
>
> Yes, well, that, and also asking the user what subject line to use, 
> and asking them if they want to compose a cover letter to explain the
> attachment, and helping them choose the list of email addreesses out
> of thier address-book, and then remembering those addresses so that 
> we can re-use them next time ...

The subject line can be hard-coded into a preference.  The cover
letter, IMHO, can again be a short text as a preference..  "Here is
your invoice from <business name> as of <invoice date>".  The email
address is already stored in the customer information.

So, honestly, no, this isn't that hard.

> Yes, hacking in crappy email support is not hard, but 'doing it right' 
> is a lot more work.

No it's not..  We just talk SMTP to the local transport.  We can do
this by calling an external program (ala sendmail) to do it.  I don't
care diddly about integrating with MUAs.  Gnucash can be an MUA whose
only function is "can send email".  That's pretty darn easy.

As I said before, the hard part is building the MIME message.  I don't
know of a toolkit that can do that for us easily..  But I suppose we
could just be stupid about it.

> --linas

-derek

-- 
       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
       URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
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