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Meli email client, pre-alpha release

meli.delivery

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Re: Meli email client, pre-alpha release

#61

Post by jakecopp »

em-bee wrote: post #42
cyphar wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

the remote access is the key for me. my email is on a server accessible from any machine. sure, webmail could do that too, but webmail can't keep my state if i switch devices. i now carry a tiny laptop (gpd pocket) where i have all my important stuff, including ssh keys to servers. i use any other available device as a workstation with a browser, and use ssh/mosh to access my tiny laptop to do the important work and…

Just heard about the GPD Pocket for the first time, it's a fascinating little thing!

What is the keyboard like to type on and how fast can you type? Where did you purchase it?

Re: Meli email client, pre-alpha release

#62

Post by pushpop »

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?

TUIs aren’t getting any more or less attention than they’ve always gotten.

I guess you could argue that with the recent-ish rise of new CLI-friendly languages and frameworks like Go, Rust and Node that the people are reinventing the wheel in terms of terminal based tooling. However there has always been a strong undercurrent of people favouring the terminal for most types of work (myself included).

Re: Meli email client, pre-alpha release

#63

Post by adiM »

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 have been using alpine (re-alpine before that and alpine before that and pine before that) for about 20 years and it ticks most of your check boxes:

- Email notifications just work. I get a bell on my terminal when a new email comes and my desktop environment (i3m) shows a highlighted xterm and a highlighted workspace so that I know that I have a new message.

- Excellent multi-account support. I have 4 email accounts and I can seamlessly move messages between them.

- It had a single maintainer who disappeared, someone else took over who disappeared, and now there is a new maintainer.

- The keybindings are relatively simple (n for next and p for previous) but the arrow keys and mouse also work.

- You can view html emails using w3m or lynx or whatever.

It supports standard features such as choosing your own editor to compose emails (default is nano, which is a successor of pico, which was the editor used by pine), filtering a message to a program (for example, to git apply patch), filter a message before sending, multiple ways to display threading, and so on. It has working support for signing and encrypting messages, decent support of reply templates. It has really really good documentation available in a context sensitive manner.

I sometimes feel that alpine/pine doesn't get as much love as other TUI email clients.

Re: Meli email client, pre-alpha release

#64

Post by cricalix »

vnorilo wrote: post #38
giancarlostoro wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The one thing that always put me off of the Qt, Wx etc libraries is that it felt like you have to be fairly deep in the weeds with layouts. HTML + CSS ( + something like a framework perhaps for JS niceness) feels much easier, because the browser does the heavy work of laying out the elements for you, resizing them etc. Maybe I've just not sat down long enough to poke the UI work, but every time I have sat down it's felt like a huge effort to get a few text boxes and a data table to render and flow, whilst over in web land, it's a few input tags and a set of table tags in a loop, and then a smattering of CSS.

Re: Meli email client, pre-alpha release

#66

Post by vnorilo »

cricalix wrote: post #64
vnorilo wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The one thing that always put me off of the Qt, Wx etc libraries is that it felt like you have to be fairly deep in the weeds with layouts. HTML + CSS ( + something like a framework perhaps for JS niceness) feels much easier, because the browser does the heavy work of laying out the elements for you, resizing them etc. Maybe I've just not sat down long enough to poke the UI work, but every time I have sat down it's f…

https://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qtquick-layouts-layouts-qml.html

Doesn't look that bad?

Re: Meli email client, pre-alpha release

#67

Post by em-bee »

jakecopp wrote: post #61
em-bee wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the remote access is the key for me. my email is on a server accessible from any machine. sure, webmail could do that too, but webmail can't keep my state if i switch devices. i now carry a tiny laptop (gpd pocket) where i have all my important stuff, including ssh keys to servers. i use any other available device as a workstation with a browser, and use ssh/mosh to access my tiny laptop to do the important work and…

Just heard about the GPD Pocket for the first time, it's a fascinating little thing! What is the keyboard like to type on and how fast can you type? Where did you purchase it?

i am not a trained typist, so i primarily type with index fingers and thumbs. that makes small keyboards much less of a problem than otherwise (before the GPD Pocket i was using an OLPC XO), and i type on it almost as fast as on a bigger one.

i got the first model of that series during their crowdfunding campaign. (it's their second product that they released 2 years ago) the keyboard on that was a bit wobbly, occasionally a key would not work (most annoying when typing a password), but for the most part it is usable.

the newer model is supposed to have a better keyboard, as i think the keyboard was what most people complained about.

it has plenty of diskspace and ram, to be practically usable, and if you got the right charger then you can hook up an external monitor and keyboard when at home or in the office, and have it portable otherwise. (and it really fits into my pant pockets)

Re: Meli email client, pre-alpha release

#68

Post by michaelmrose »

crispinb wrote: post #31
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.

What is complicated about linux Mint or even Debian?

Re: Meli email client, pre-alpha release

#69

Post by helb »

mcovalt wrote: post #51
rightos wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Evolution mail and Geary, GNOME’s big and little email clients, respectively, are the best options right now. Both are great.

Geary looks great, i wanted to switch to it years ago (from Thunderbird), but it had no support for PGP – https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/geary/issues/6 :(

Re: Meli email client, pre-alpha release

#70

Post by jobigoud »

paulcarroty wrote: post #45
rightos wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Thunderbird has a big problem - UI still looks like written in 90's. I'm switched to Geary, good Apple Mail clone.

Why is barebone UI a problem? What feature a UI looking like it's written in the 90's is preventing?
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