You can't just configure mutt (or alpine, et al.) to use Gmail?
Show HN: BAREmail – minimalist Gmail client for bad WiFi
11–20 of 49 posts
Re: Show HN: BAREmail – minimalist Gmail client for bad WiFi
#12In a better world we'd still be using a common protocol to interact with mail submission/delivery agents.
Email is not a common protocol?
Email isn't a protocol. SMTP, POP, IMAP, JMAP are protocols.
GMail requires you to enable IMAP/POP to use it and uses proprietary auth protocol or use unsafe application passwords.
GMail IMAP also has a bunch of IMAP extensions that are unique to GMail.
Point is - primary interface to GMail is REST API that is (again) unique to GMail.
Re: Show HN: BAREmail – minimalist Gmail client for bad WiFi
#13Re: Show HN: BAREmail – minimalist Gmail client for bad WiFi
#14[flagged]
I fear for all the bots that aren't as obvious as this one
Re: Show HN: BAREmail – minimalist Gmail client for bad WiFi
#15Lovely app and it’s a shame that Google hasn’t created a better solution for oauth CLI apps.
Re: Show HN: BAREmail – minimalist Gmail client for bad WiFi
#16I really want a fast multi-email client that can easily show full contact history in a sidebar. Any options out there? Em Client does this, but it is buggy and/or slow. No such Thunderbird plugins exist, either.
Re: Show HN: BAREmail – minimalist Gmail client for bad WiFi
#17I don't get it, why not use _any_ client with IMAP instead?
Re: Show HN: BAREmail – minimalist Gmail client for bad WiFi
#18[flagged]
[deleted]
Re: Show HN: BAREmail – minimalist Gmail client for bad WiFi
#19I don't get it, why not use _any_ client with IMAP instead?
Because IMAP sucks on bad network links. It involves a huge number of round trips to synchronize the state, and re-establishing the shared state when the connection is interrupted takes forever.
A lot of online commenters refuse to believe this but the standard Gmail interface is highly optimized to cope with bad network connections, hide latency, and recover from interruptions. If you have the code assets and initial state cached in your browser, it behaves very well under bad network conditions.
Re: Show HN: BAREmail – minimalist Gmail client for bad WiFi
#20Dedicated mail clients have existed for a lot longer than GMail has, work with any service using the POP3 or IMAP protocol, and don't run inside a web browser.
I recall we could dial up a super slow connection over telephone lines, get all our mails into such client in less than 4 minutes over said slow line, just to dial off again.¹ Afterwards we would read all our mails offline with all the time in the world, carefully crafting replies and put those into an "Outgoing" folder for the next time we could dial up a connection again (usually the next day). :) ¹) back then you…
That worked because while the link may have been slow, it was circuit-switched and generally provided the 2400 bits. "Bad wifi" is unbelievably bad compared to an old dial-up link. It's so much worse than you're imagining.