I've spent the last two years building a new email client • Hacker News Board

Re: I've spent the last two years building a new email client

#231

Post by dotancohen » Wed, May 02, 2018, 12:49 PM UTC

muszc-master wrote: post #59

SyneRyder wrote: post #34

This looks pretty cool, I'm really pleased to see people writing new email clients, and you've clearly worked very hard on this! I have a bunch of questions that I couldn't find out from the website (but are obscure enough that I shouldn't expect to): * Is this a purely native app, or an Electron / Javascript app? Personally I'm only interested in native apps & Electron would be a deal breaker - but I'm weird, most p…

1. It's an Electron app, but it is built to use as little RAM as possible, when I run it on my old Macbook Air, it consumes only around 300mb of RAM maximum, which is less than what Finder consumes, and I consider everything over this limit to be a bug. 2. Currently not supporting Mbox/Maildir but downloading emails directly from the server, however an import of this is on the todo list 3. Re: turn off conversation v…

Some more questions, as I don't see them addressed on the site:

1. Is there an extension architecture, that I might be able to write my own extensions?

2. Can I edit the "From" address on outgoing mail, and will it remember my preferred "From" address on a per-recipient basis?

3. Does it have extensive keyboard shortcut support, or does it require a mouse?

4. Does it work well with both of the Linux clipboards, the standard system one and the X-provided middle-click one? (Other Electron apps, such as Postman, do not)

Re: I've spent the last two years building a new email client

#232

Post by dotancohen » Wed, May 02, 2018, 12:50 PM UTC

blowski wrote: post #229

dotancohen wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's an Electron app, but it is built to use as little RAM as possible It's _either_ an Electron app, _or_ built to use as little RAM as possible. I'm not an Electron hater, but if you are starting out with Electron then you are already at a far disadvantage both technically (see aforementioned RAM usage) and politically (many people won't use them, mostly for the technical reasons). FWIW I use the Telegram client…

Can't you build something "to use as little RAM as possible, given that it's using Electron"?

OP says that it uses "only 300 MB" of RAM. For an application that deals with primarily with downloading, uploading, and displaying text.

How would you respond to someone saying "I raise small mammals, well small given that they are elephants"?

Re: I've spent the last two years building a new email client

#233

Post by muszc-master » Wed, May 02, 2018, 12:53 PM UTC

dotancohen wrote: post #231

muszc-master wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. It's an Electron app, but it is built to use as little RAM as possible, when I run it on my old Macbook Air, it consumes only around 300mb of RAM maximum, which is less than what Finder consumes, and I consider everything over this limit to be a bug. 2. Currently not supporting Mbox/Maildir but downloading emails directly from the server, however an import of this is on the todo list 3. Re: turn off conversation v…

Some more questions, as I don't see them addressed on the site: 1. Is there an extension architecture, that I might be able to write my own extensions? 2. Can I edit the "From" address on outgoing mail, and will it remember my preferred "From" address on a per-recipient basis? 3. Does it have extensive keyboard shortcut support, or does it require a mouse? 4. Does it work well with both of the Linux clipboards, the s…

1) No extension architecture right now. Do you have anything in mind you'd like to build?

2) Not at the moment, but it supports multiple email accounts at once and you'll be able to move emails effortlessly between accounts in the near future.

3) Yes, it has extensive keyboard shortcut support

4) It hasn't been released for Linux yet, but once it will, I'll make sure to try to address this issue.

Re: I've spent the last two years building a new email client

#234

Post by kristiandupont » Wed, May 02, 2018, 12:53 PM UTC

dotancohen wrote: post #226

muszc-master wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. It's an Electron app, but it is built to use as little RAM as possible, when I run it on my old Macbook Air, it consumes only around 300mb of RAM maximum, which is less than what Finder consumes, and I consider everything over this limit to be a bug. 2. Currently not supporting Mbox/Maildir but downloading emails directly from the server, however an import of this is on the todo list 3. Re: turn off conversation v…

> It's an Electron app, but it is built to use as little RAM as possible It's _either_ an Electron app, _or_ built to use as little RAM as possible. I'm not an Electron hater, but if you are starting out with Electron then you are already at a far disadvantage both technically (see aforementioned RAM usage) and politically (many people won't use them, mostly for the technical reasons). FWIW I use the Telegram client…

>many people won't use them, mostly for the technical reasons

I really don't think that's true outside of the HN echo chamber. Like OP, I am using a Macbook Air which is hardly a supercomputer and vscode runs perfectly fine on it.

Re: I've spent the last two years building a new email client

#235

Post by ramijames » Wed, May 02, 2018, 12:55 PM UTC

Fuck man, just let me use it.

Re: I've spent the last two years building a new email client

#236

Post by jahvo » Wed, May 02, 2018, 12:56 PM UTC

dotancohen wrote: post #226

muszc-master wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. It's an Electron app, but it is built to use as little RAM as possible, when I run it on my old Macbook Air, it consumes only around 300mb of RAM maximum, which is less than what Finder consumes, and I consider everything over this limit to be a bug. 2. Currently not supporting Mbox/Maildir but downloading emails directly from the server, however an import of this is on the todo list 3. Re: turn off conversation v…

> It's an Electron app, but it is built to use as little RAM as possible It's _either_ an Electron app, _or_ built to use as little RAM as possible. I'm not an Electron hater, but if you are starting out with Electron then you are already at a far disadvantage both technically (see aforementioned RAM usage) and politically (many people won't use them, mostly for the technical reasons). FWIW I use the Telegram client…

Telegram is not an Electron app. It's a Qt app written in C++.

Re: I've spent the last two years building a new email client

#237

Post by arifmeticus » Wed, May 02, 2018, 12:56 PM UTC

dotancohen wrote: post #226

muszc-master wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. It's an Electron app, but it is built to use as little RAM as possible, when I run it on my old Macbook Air, it consumes only around 300mb of RAM maximum, which is less than what Finder consumes, and I consider everything over this limit to be a bug. 2. Currently not supporting Mbox/Maildir but downloading emails directly from the server, however an import of this is on the todo list 3. Re: turn off conversation v…

> It's an Electron app, but it is built to use as little RAM as possible It's _either_ an Electron app, _or_ built to use as little RAM as possible. I'm not an Electron hater, but if you are starting out with Electron then you are already at a far disadvantage both technically (see aforementioned RAM usage) and politically (many people won't use them, mostly for the technical reasons). FWIW I use the Telegram client…

>FWIW I use the Telegram client which is an Electron app

What OS are you using Telegram in?

Re: I've spent the last two years building a new email client

#238

Post by [deleted] » Wed, May 02, 2018, 12:56 PM UTC

dotancohen wrote: post #226

muszc-master wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. It's an Electron app, but it is built to use as little RAM as possible, when I run it on my old Macbook Air, it consumes only around 300mb of RAM maximum, which is less than what Finder consumes, and I consider everything over this limit to be a bug. 2. Currently not supporting Mbox/Maildir but downloading emails directly from the server, however an import of this is on the todo list 3. Re: turn off conversation v…

> It's an Electron app, but it is built to use as little RAM as possible It's _either_ an Electron app, _or_ built to use as little RAM as possible. I'm not an Electron hater, but if you are starting out with Electron then you are already at a far disadvantage both technically (see aforementioned RAM usage) and politically (many people won't use them, mostly for the technical reasons). FWIW I use the Telegram client…

[deleted]

Re: I've spent the last two years building a new email client

#239

Post by zimpenfish » Wed, May 02, 2018, 12:58 PM UTC

cyphar wrote: post #154

zimpenfish wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Claims that searches happen in milliseconds need to state the size of the mailbox I'd honestly outsource the indexing and searching to something like mairix which is designed purely for this purpose. (On my 4.5GB Maildir, 57 folders, 111k emails, mairix takes 205s to index from scratch. Incremental updates are <5s. Worst search I've yet done took 0.5s to return 13k hits for 'bank'.)

Or "notmuch" which has integration with Mutt and similar mailboxes, and it has GMail-like tagging and boolean searches.

Interesting, thanks! Trying that now. Took twice as long (13m) to index my folders (and ignoring a whole bunch of fake-mbox files that seem to be coming from my gmail-to-local forwarding) but the searching is about the same kind of speed as `mairix`.

Re: I've spent the last two years building a new email client

#240

Post by dotancohen » Wed, May 02, 2018, 12:58 PM UTC

muszc-master wrote: post #233

dotancohen wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some more questions, as I don't see them addressed on the site: 1. Is there an extension architecture, that I might be able to write my own extensions? 2. Can I edit the "From" address on outgoing mail, and will it remember my preferred "From" address on a per-recipient basis? 3. Does it have extensive keyboard shortcut support, or does it require a mouse? 4. Does it work well with both of the Linux clipboards, the s…

1) No extension architecture right now. Do you have anything in mind you'd like to build? 2) Not at the moment, but it supports multiple email accounts at once and you'll be able to move emails effortlessly between accounts in the near future. 3) Yes, it has extensive keyboard shortcut support 4) It hasn't been released for Linux yet, but once it will, I'll make sure to try to address this issue.

> 1) No extension architecture right now. Do you have anything in mind you'd like to build?

Not yet, but I assure you that I will! Especially if the answer to the next question is negative...

> 2) Not at the moment, but it supports multiple email accounts at once and you'll be able to move emails effortlessly between accounts in the near future.

I have literally thousands of "accounts" as I have a catch-all domain that I've been using since 2001. I need the ability to edit the "From" address, minimum. And if I'm going to use the email client regularly, then it needs to remember the "From" address to use on a per-recipient basis. That is what extensions are for!

> 3) Yes, it has extensive keyboard shortcut support

Terrific!

> 4) It hasn't been released for Linux yet, but once it will, I'll make sure to try to address this issue.

You are welcome to contact me for testing. muszc-master splat dotancohen spot com.