Meli email client, pre-alpha release • Hacker News Board

Re: Meli email client, pre-alpha release

#31

Post by crispinb » Mon, Jul 08, 2019, 3:45 AM UTC

Ahmed90 wrote: post #22

With all respect for the hard work done on this client, but is it just me or is the TUI getting too much attention recently?? I think the GUI stacks are too bloated or too hideous (electron, cpp/qt,c# and it's limitations, etc...) to work with these days so much that the cool kids (hardcore techy people) just gave up and started doing TUIs to solve their own problems directly?

I think that's right. It's kind of sad. After decades of explosive tech growth, we're left with there being no really good modern desktop OS, and no cross-platform GUI that approaches the potential of the medium. It's a fragmented mess, full of accidental complexity & user frustration.

Re: Meli email client, pre-alpha release

#32

Post by cyphar » Mon, Jul 08, 2019, 4:05 AM UTC

Ahmed90 wrote: post #22

With all respect for the hard work done on this client, but is it just me or is the TUI getting too much attention recently?? I think the GUI stacks are too bloated or too hideous (electron, cpp/qt,c# and it's limitations, etc...) to work with these days so much that the cool kids (hardcore techy people) just gave up and started doing TUIs to solve their own problems directly?

I switched to using TUIs for everything except web browsing ~8 years ago (and I switched from GMail to Mutt ~3 years ago). I honestly can't imagine going back (I'm a Linux user so this might bias my viewpoint). GUIs either feel dated or sluggish, and I find that there are far more mature and continually-maintained TUI projects for most developer-related tasks than GUI ones. This is probably because (Linux) developers have a bias towards TUIs and so write tools that suit their workflow.

Another massive benefit is that I can seamlessly use all of the same tools over an SSH/Mosh connection. X11 forwarding over SSH has never practically worked for me (it's too laggy and Australian internet makes doing it between networks basically impossible).

Re: Meli email client, pre-alpha release

#33

Post by marttt » Mon, Jul 08, 2019, 4:08 AM UTC

euske wrote: post #4

tambourine_man wrote: post #2

We seem to be experiencing a renaissance of TUI software, particularly email clients[1] and I couldn’t be happier. Email and TUI are such a natural fit. Make it work with your favorite editor and most nerds will switch. [1] https://aerc-mail.org/

I, for one, want a pure command line based email client, not just a TUI client, that is well integrated with bash/zsh in an everyday use, e.g. $ inbox (shows the first 10 emails in the inbox) $ search from:john (shows emails from john with numbers) $ reply 4 (opens up vi to edit a reply to the email #4) ... I've been dreaming a client like this for decades, and actually started developing it, but the development is s…

Re: Meli email client, pre-alpha release

#34

Post by rightos » Mon, Jul 08, 2019, 4:15 AM UTC

Ahmed90 wrote: post #22

With all respect for the hard work done on this client, but is it just me or is the TUI getting too much attention recently?? I think the GUI stacks are too bloated or too hideous (electron, cpp/qt,c# and it's limitations, etc...) to work with these days so much that the cool kids (hardcore techy people) just gave up and started doing TUIs to solve their own problems directly?

I'm still using Thunderbird, which is barely maintained for a decent standalone IMAP client - it's beginning to feel pretty ridiculous. I was having some search issues the other day and I looked at alternatives - the options were basically Outlook, Claws Mail which is ugly as sin, eM Client which is Windows only and Mailspring which actually looked pretty good... right up until it asked me to make an account for use with my own IMAP servers - no thanks.

I didn't think this was a big ask but I guess now that most people just use a single Gmail account the market for such things is dwindling. Here I sit with 7 accounts in Thunderbird. Maybe I'm just going to be stuck with eM Client or Outlook and using RDP to check my email. I'm willing to pay, someone please give me a decent cross platform alternative with a GUI, ideally a proper, non-electron one.

The TUI clients I've looked at all seem to suffer from some mix of:

- Poor mail notifications

- Poor multi-account support

- Single maintainer that could disappear at any time

- Archaic keybindings, or perhaps I'm just too lazy to learn them

- HTML mail is used widely now as most people use webmail and just doesn't map well to console applications

Overall when I want my mail client to "just work" I've found them to be piss poor compared to Thunderbird. Which is beginning to seem rather silly, but it's still my experience.

I don't know what to do. Maybe I should fork Mailspring, strip out the account garbage and just tolerate Electron, but that'd create a whole bunch of maintenance work I just can't take on right now.

Re: Meli email client, pre-alpha release

#35

Post by owen11 » Mon, Jul 08, 2019, 4:27 AM UTC

How to compile it on Ubuntu? I am getting 'make: * No targets specified and no makefile found. Stop.' when I run 'make' and there is no configure file.

Also, I can't figure out a way to sign up to https://git.meli.delivery so I can create an 'issue.

Re: Meli email client, pre-alpha release

#36

Post by pauldino » Mon, Jul 08, 2019, 4:37 AM UTC

owen11 wrote: post #35

How to compile it on Ubuntu? I am getting 'make: * No targets specified and no makefile found. Stop.' when I run 'make' and there is no configure file. Also, I can't figure out a way to sign up to https://git.meli.delivery so I can create an 'issue.

The cargo.toml file gives it away as a Rust project, so install Rust then

> cargo build

to just compile, or

> cargo run

to compile & run

Re: Meli email client, pre-alpha release

#37

Post by crispinb » Mon, Jul 08, 2019, 4:43 AM UTC

rightos wrote: post #34

Ahmed90 wrote: post #22

With all respect for the hard work done on this client, but is it just me or is the TUI getting too much attention recently?? I think the GUI stacks are too bloated or too hideous (electron, cpp/qt,c# and it's limitations, etc...) to work with these days so much that the cool kids (hardcore techy people) just gave up and started doing TUIs to solve their own problems directly?

I'm still using Thunderbird, which is barely maintained for a decent standalone IMAP client - it's beginning to feel pretty ridiculous. I was having some search issues the other day and I looked at alternatives - the options were basically Outlook, Claws Mail which is ugly as sin, eM Client which is Windows only and Mailspring which actually looked pretty good... right up until it asked me to make an account for use…

I'm kind of in the same situation, except that I've abandoned desktop mail clients since moving away from OS X. Mail.app had its problems, and seemed to be getting worse, but it's the only local mail client I've been able to tolerate for some time.

Now I just forward my IMAP accounts to gmail. This is horrible for many reasons (don't lecture me, I know), but I haven't been able to find a good solution and messing about with email is time-consuming.

I may just consolidate on Fastmail when my current IMAP provider subscription needs renewing. From a brief test a while back their web client seems to be on a par with gmail.

Re: Meli email client, pre-alpha release

#38

Post by vnorilo » Mon, Jul 08, 2019, 4:59 AM UTC

giancarlostoro wrote: post #23

Ahmed90 wrote: post #22

With all respect for the hard work done on this client, but is it just me or is the TUI getting too much attention recently?? I think the GUI stacks are too bloated or too hideous (electron, cpp/qt,c# and it's limitations, etc...) to work with these days so much that the cool kids (hardcore techy people) just gave up and started doing TUIs to solve their own problems directly?

I think you've hit the nail on the head, I've thought about this as well. I think it's clear that UI's are a problem yet to be solved, which is why Electron took off. If you've got a website, you've got a GUI with Electron, and a looot of people know how to slap together some JS and HTML. I would love to see a language agnostic UI stack that can run across platforms, to an extent Electron is "language agnostic" since…

As a thought experiment, how would the stack differ from Qt, which runs just about everywhere and has bindings for a huge range of languages?

Re: Meli email client, pre-alpha release

#39

Post by zzo38computer » Mon, Jul 08, 2019, 5:00 AM UTC

Ahmed90 wrote: post #22

With all respect for the hard work done on this client, but is it just me or is the TUI getting too much attention recently?? I think the GUI stacks are too bloated or too hideous (electron, cpp/qt,c# and it's limitations, etc...) to work with these days so much that the cool kids (hardcore techy people) just gave up and started doing TUIs to solve their own problems directly?

I also think many GUI are too bloated or other problems (and most widget sets don't implement scrollbars like Xaw, and use antialiased fonts with too much kerning, and other problems). TUI can help many things, although also command-line interfaces are. (I use Heirloom-mailx, which is email program with command-line interface; and I am also writing a NNTP client software with command-line interface too.)

Re: Meli email client, pre-alpha release

#40

Post by dngray » Mon, Jul 08, 2019, 5:02 AM UTC

tambourine_man wrote: post #2

We seem to be experiencing a renaissance of TUI software, particularly email clients[1] and I couldn’t be happier. Email and TUI are such a natural fit. Make it work with your favorite editor and most nerds will switch. [1] https://aerc-mail.org/

Yeah I saw this a while back https://drewdevault.com/2019/06/03/Announcing-aerc-0.1.0.htm... He has a really nice video there demonstrating it.

I wonder how it compares? I guess both are pretty alpha at the moment.