Platemail

Welcome to the Platemail homepage

Recent News

See the latest updates on Platemail development on my Platemail News blog.

What is Platemail?

Platemail is a cross-platform email client written in Java, featuring built-in, configurable spam detection and filtering capabilities, a variety of user interfaces and the option of storing mail in a relational database.

What does that mean?

Platemail is an application for reading and sending email, similar (in some respects) to applications like Outlook Express, KMail, and other alternatives. Because it is written in Java, it will run on (almost) any platform: Windows, Linux, Solaris, MacOS, etc. This is a Good Thing.

Platemail grew out of my own frustration with existing email clients, and aims to address some of the problems associated with these other applications. Platemail is designed to be configurable and to support a wide variety of plugins for almost any email-related task. The ultimate goal is to make Platemail more of a base for other email clients, which will add components and customisations to suit a specific need - but that is a long way off.

Another of the key motivations for working on Platemail was to provide a client with more complete support for mail filtering, and in particular spam-filtering. As this has been a goal from the very outset, rather than an additional issue that has arisen during development, it is hoped that Platemail will offer better capabilities for reducing the massive amount of spam that many email users currently receive. Again, Platemail will provide a simple interface by which other developers can add their own spam-filtering components.

Platemail has a graphical user interface (GUI) the first screenshots are now available, but the application itself is designed to be largely independent of it. This means that it is easy to create other interfaces for Platemail; indeed, a console-based interface has been used during the development of the core system.

Email programs typically store all their data in mbox files, or as directories containing all their emails as individual files. This works well enough, but as there are systems which exist purely for the rapid, efficient, and robust storage of data, it seems like a good idea to let them do all the hard work. Platemail therefore allows you to store the data in a relational database. Traditional storage mechanisms will also be supported.

Where can I get it?

You can't, at the moment, because I haven't finished it. As soon as it gets to the stage where it can be used, I'll make it available from these pages.

Who made it?

I did, and I'm Neil Campbell. I recently graduated from the Computer Science department of the University of Manchester with an MSc in Advanced Computer Science, and I now work full time at a software company in Manchester. You can find out more about me here.

Where can I find out more?

• Look at the Platemail News blog.
• Visit the project's Sourceforge project page.
• Join one of the project's mailing lists.
• Email me directly at batneil (at) users (dot) sourceforge (dot) net.