Summary
A software developer, in particular at SUSE, needs a reliable and robust mail client.
While many SUSE developers prefer text based mail clients like mutt or pine, it's about time to arrive in the 21st century and get a GUI based mail client.
Requirements:
IMAP support
Robust
GUI (real GUI, no Web stuff)
Reasonable mail thread handling
Reasonable mailing list handling
Address book
Can handle attachments well
No spell checking or option to disable it (who wants this in the first place?!)
Bonus:
Can handle Google contacts
Google calendar integration
GroupWise calendar integration
Rejected Candidates
Mutt
not graphical
Pine
not graphical
KMail/Kontact (KDE)
Pro
Google contacts provider available (works very well)
Google calendar integration (works very well)
Con
Relies on Akonadi (a MySQL-based mail back-end)
Fragile
Over-complex
Needed akonadiconsole numerous times to fix broken mail environment
Got even more instable with the advent of Plasma 5
Not very well maintained (?)
Mozilla Thunderbird
Pro
Google contacts integration (via add-on)
Google calendar integration (via Lightning add-on)
Con
Old and poorly maintained
Not officially maintained by Mozilla.org any more (?)
Loses connection to SUSE IMAP server all the time:
- No notification about new mails :-((
- Need to click on each mail folder to get notification about new mails there :-((
- Need to restart every few hours
UI nightmare:
- Button order for immediate mail actions changes between one mail and the next ("Delete" (!!))
- Over-complex settings
- Certain settings hidden in about:config page (which is hard to get to)
Tested
Trojita
Home page: http://trojita.flaska.net/
Screen shot page: http://trojita.flaska.net/screenshots.html
Qt-based
Git version: 0.7 (this is the version that was tested); Version in OBS: 0.5
Still under development
Somewhat promising, but still missing quite some features:
- No simple way to delete a mail (move to trash) and go to the next one.
- Uncommon approach to deleting: No trash folder, but marking mails as "deleted" in the original folder; later use "expunge" to actually delete them. This is probably what the IMAP protocol does internally, but usually that level of detail is not exposed to the user.
- No way to select any fonts. The default font for mail content is a constant width (good!) bold (bad!) font.
- Keeps its own address book in ~/.abook/ ; no way (yet?) to import address books, no integration with Google contacts (yet?).
+1 for having a simple tab to switch between HTML and plain text display.
Overall impression: Promising, but still needs some work.
Candidates to Evaluate
Evolution (GNOME)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_(software)
- Gtk-based
Claws Mail (Ex-Sylpheed)
Looking for hackers with the skills:
Nothing? Add some keywords!
This project is part of:
Hack Week 14
Activity
Comments
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over 9 years ago by keichwa | Reply
Gnus on Emacs. Google integration is probably tricky. You probably will have to export the Google data (addresses) and import it into BBDB.
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over 9 years ago by shundhammer | Reply
One of the requirements was GUI. Emacs does have some menus, but it's a far cry from what I'd call "GUI". ;-)
Also, Gnus is probably the most complicated approach to mail; it was originally meant as a news reader, and IMHO that shows everywhere.
But thanks anyway for your input!
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over 9 years ago by dsterba | Reply
I've tried Trojita. Full switch from mutt was not possible at this time because:
- the deletion issues as you mentioned
- working with threads is not implemented: delete whole thread, mark thread as read/unread, move thread to another folder
- pipe message to a command (usecase: apply patches from the mail client)
- advanced filtering (like limit in mutt)
- shortcut mapping to custom commands or filter rules
If this sounds like I want mutt in GUI, that's right. I've tried claws in the past but there were other issues, I don't remember.
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