Quotient 0.9.0a, 20 May 2004
============================

For the details of what's new in Quotient 0.9.0, see the ChangeLog
file included in this distribution.  For instructions on how to run
Quotient, see the doc/running.txt file included in this distribution.


What is it?
===========

Quotient is an open source product that combines a SIP, POP3, IMAP4,
SMTP, and HTTP messaging server with tools for information management
and retrieval. It is a mail server, a voice over IP server and
provides searchable webmail and more.

Please send bug reports to support@divmod.org, or join the development
mailing list:

    http://divmod.org/users/mailman.twistd/listinfo/divmod-dev


What does it do?
================

Quotient is a capable and convenient mail server with support for
POP3, IMAP4, and SMTP. Users can access messages over POP3 and IMAP4
using existing mail clients such as Thunderbird, Outlook Express and
Apple Mail.  Quotient also provides a web interface allowing users to
access and search their messages, and configure their
account. Administrators can manage the system using command line tools
or a web interface. Quotient can retrieve email from remote hosts
using POP3 or IMAP4, enabling users to consolidate several email
accounts into their Quotient account. Quotient supports SSL for secure
communications between the server and clients.

Quotient is SIP registrar and stateless proxy, managing voice-over-IP
registrations and routing calls made using SIP-enabled IP phones
including Shtoom and xten. A web interface to these voice features is
also available.

Quotient also provides tools to manage all the information associated
with these email and voice features. All the email in Quotient is
indexed and cross-indexed allowing easy retrieval of information using
full-text search or by person or by date. Mailing list messages are
automatically filed into folders. Quotient can quickly display
messages from particular individuals and provides an address book for
tracking contact information. A simple calendar allows viewing of
messages by date. A gallery provides quick access to images that have
been sent via email.


Release Highlights
==================

  * Vastly improved scalability and stability
    We wrangle bsddb more effectively ensuring rock solid data storage
    and disaster recovery; system performance scales more gracefully
    under load; exceptions are rare. Please report any bugs via
    bugs@divmod.org.

  * Better all-around protocol support

    Users will find the POP3 and IMAP4 servers faster and more
    responsive. Many small bugs in the IMAP4 server have also been
    fixed, and better flag support has been added.

  * Administrative and utility tools

    Many new features have been added to the administrative page. A
    command line tool for user creation has been added, and the
    procedurefor deploying Quotient has been simplified greatly. The
    admin and tools directory contain helpful scripts for working
    with and developing on Quotient.

  * Spawned Nevow

    Nevow is the web rendering system that was developed as part of
    Quotient. We have now split out Nevow into its own Python module
    making it a general purpose tool to ease the web development pains
    of all our open source friends. Learn more about Nevow at
    nevow.divmod.org.
    
  * New UI look-and-feel

    Quotient has a completely new look including the new divmod.org
    logo.

  * Convenient, informative summary page

    Information about account activity is now aggregated and made
    available on a single page, allowing users to see all account
    activity at once.

  * More accurate, efficient scheduler

    Internally, database support for scheduled events has been
    simplified and sped up, allowing Quotient to do more.

  * Tool support for serving multiple domains

    Multiple domains can be added to a single Quotient instance, and
    users added within each domain.

  * More "hands-off" database code

    The database environment is now automatically kept clean and
    small.  Unneeded files are moved to an archive directory for
    backup or removal as the site administrator desires.

  * Faster, Unicode full text search

    The search code using Lupy has been greatly simplified and sped up,
    meaning Quotient can index messages faster and return search query
    results faster. Quotient correctly handles Unicode emails and search
    terms.

  * Better MIME parser

    Certain extremely malformed spam messages no longer trigger
    errors.

  * In-memory Pool implementation ("DSU Pools")

    Lists of Items can be wrapped in DSU Pools and handed to code
    which expects a database Pool.  Queries on these DSU pools consist
    entirely of operations on in-memory data, making them extremely
    fast, and lists no longer need to be special cased, simplifying
    many parts of the code.

  * More unit tests and functional tests, improved functional test
    framework

    Over one hundred fifty new unit tests and more than a dozen new
    functional tests.  The functional test harness has been greatly
    improved to simplify the addition of new tests.  The
    quotient.functional package contains the new code, which allows
    pages to be loaded, links to be clicked and forms to be posted.

  * Contextual help framework

    Help text can be displayed in the web interface based on the types
    of objects being rendered.

  * Bug fixes

  * More tests


Requirements
============

Python: http://www.python.org/

    The programming language that Quotient is written in.  preferably
    the latest available version (2.3.3 at the time of this writing)

Twisted: http://www.twistedmatrix.com/

    The server framework we use.
    v1.3.0 or later.

Lupy: http://www.divmod.org/

    Our text search engine.
    v0.2.1 or later.

SpamBayes: http://spambayes.sourceforge.net/

    The best Bayesian spam classifier in the biz!
    The current version is 1.0rc1.

Python Imaging Library (PIL): http://www.pythonware.com/products/pil/

    Used to generate thumbnails
    v1.1.4 or later

pyOpenSSL (only needed if you want to use SSL functionality):
    
    http://pyopenssl.sourceforge.net/

Quotient runs on Unix, Windows and MacOS. For larger installations
Unix is recommended.

Quotient's web UI currently works best in Mozilla and Firebird.  In
due course, we will also support IE (Win & Mac) and Safari.

Quotient's IMAP server has been tested and is known to work with
Thunderbird, Mozilla-Mail, Ximian Evolution, Outlook Express and Apple
Mail.


FAQs
=====

Q. I'm trying to run mktap, what's a server.pem file?

A. For right now, mktap requires that you set up an SSL certificate.
This means that you need pyOpenSSL installed
(http://pyopenssl.sourceforge.net or for debian "apt-get install
python2.3-pyopenssl"). To generate a server.pem file, go to the admin
directory in the source tree and do 


user@foo ~/Quotient/admin > ./certcreate -h foo.example.com 


You'll have a server.pem file sitting in your working directory, simply
move it to where you'd like Quotient to run, and then run mktap there.
Please note that you can also specify the --certificate option to 
mktap quotient if you have a server.pem file you'd like to use, or if 
you'd like to store your pem file in a directory somewhere else
besides the directory where quotient is running.



