[freearchitecture] Communications management

[Bruno Postle]

On Mon 24-Feb-2003 at 11:28:27PM -0500, Steve Hall wrote:
> 
> I had another idea probably a bit broader than Free Architecture,
> but definitely relavant to the practical day to day affairs of the
> architect: communications management.
> 
> I have now written/maintained two different apps which managed
> document correspondence including address management and simple
> document counting. You pick the button and after entering the project
> number, a dialog pops with a list of contacts and forms. You make a
> few selections and the document is automatically filled, complete with
> addressee info, cc's, project name and info, and is named/saved in the
> project folder with a consecutively numbered name.

It sounds a bit like you are implementing the .doc equivalent of a
decent email client with address-book, distribution-lists, macros
and templates.

Perhaps you are looking at this the wrong way around, the correct
place for electronic archives of correspondence is in an IMAP
server; the correct format for correspondence is plain-text email,
with HTML where formatting requires it, and attachments for
non-readable data.

Obviously it's still going to be a while before dead-tree documents
go away forever; surely the problem can be solved better by building
a proper searchable email based system that has a future, and then
spending some time automating a print system that hangs off it?

-- 
Bruno