Whiteout Mail 2.0 & Gmail Api Support

[Tankred Hase]

Hey,

I'm currently adding support for the Gmail REST api to the Whiteout Mail open source client, so that it will still work after our backend services have been turned off (https://blog.whiteout.io/2015/11/30/end-of-life-for-whiteout-key-service-action-required/).

There are official JS client libs from google, but they need to be loaded as dependencies using the GAPI script via CDN with a lot of overhead code and http roundtrips.

https://developers.google.com/gmail/api/

Since the REST based api is well documented and quite simple, I decided to write my own minimal JS client. It's currently a WIP, but the code is here:

https://github.com/tanx/mail/blob/dev/gmail/src/js/email/gmail-client.js

Not all message MIME types are supported yet, but I've got a working proof of concept for sending and receiving PGP/MIME. The nice thing about the Gmail Api is that it supports raw RFC 2822 messages which makes using it a breeze thanks to email.js' MIME encoding libs and OpenPGP.js.

Once everything is ready, I'm planing to release Whiteout Mail 2.0 as a progressive web app (https://infrequently.org/2015/06/progressive-apps-escaping-tabs-without-losing-our-soul/) with an offline first approach via Service Worker. I'm also investigating Push notifications support on Chrome Desktop/Android using GCM, but I'm not sure yet if that will be in the 2.0 release. You can try the current dev build (from my GitHub Pages branch) here:

https://tankredhase.com/mail/

If anyone is interested in contributing, let me know. This effort will exist in a non-profit context outside of the Whiteout Networks company. Not sure if the name will stay Whiteout Mail or something else but the License of the code will probably stay MIT.

Thanks,
Tankred