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Meli email client, pre-alpha release

meli.delivery

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Re: Meli email client, pre-alpha release

#81

Post by wjoe »

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.

For email, designed like it's the 90s is a good thing, in my opinion. Thunderbird could do with a bit of polish, sure, but it has every option under the sun. I tried Geary once, it looked shiny, but the interface was far too basic.

Re: Meli email client, pre-alpha release

#82

Post by drinfinity »

mxuribe wrote: post #25

Maybe its my age but I actually like TUI-style for something like email, because its less taxing on the eyes. Its funny, nowadays, either the UI of some apps/clients is way too busy/dsitracting, and colorful, and annoying...Or, its bare and tough to figure out (what does that icon do again?)...but not intuitive. Again, it could be my age...but i like the simplicity of TUI types of interfaces...at least for things lik…

No, I'm young-ish (33) and I agree.

TUI's are just a very restricted type of GUI's. These restrictions make the devs focus on what is important, because there is literally no room for bullshit. These UI's pack more punch per pixel and thus make for a more productive experience - if you're so inclined.

While I like true CLI TUIs, I can also live with TUI-like interface in the browser. I just like the style of them, the compactness, the cleanness. They will never go out of style. They are too productive.

Re: Meli email client, pre-alpha release

#83

Post by VvR-Ox »

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?

No, it didn't get enough before because everyone thought they'd need some shiny sht.

Instead TUI's work just fine for a lot of things while consuming less of your computers resources as well as being easy on your eyes and state of mind (no hectic blinking and notification banners and sounds distracting you from everything you do).

Just because we have more resources and faster computers doesn't mean we should max them out. Use less and you could have a device with enormous battery duration, blazingly fast and easy on the mind.

They even support mouse interaction and enable me to work for some hours with an old thinkpad before the battery dies.

With mail it's something different in my opinion. While it was easy to get used to VIM, nmtui, newsbeuter etc. I could never get my head around mutt.

I hate to use Thunderbird because of the UI/UX and some missing features and I miss the seamless integration into the OS (click on a date in a mail to create an appointment in your calendar*) but it's the only good working mail client out there I know.

Mailspring/Nylas has a really nice interface but as another user wrote it wants to steal your credentials and I don't like that.

Electron is okay as long as it helps providing a better UX, for me that is one of the most important features besides stability & security.

As a calendar app "MineTime" is the best I've seen out there so far and sometimes I wish I'd have a bunch of apps like these for a great "FOSS Desktop Experience".

@author: Great work - hope you create something like mutt and alpine that can enrich the ideas in the world of TUI mail clients.

Re: Meli email client, pre-alpha release

#84

Post by bwat49 »

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.

Agreed, I've been really happy with evolution

Re: Meli email client, pre-alpha release

#85

Post by Crinus »

VvR-Ox wrote: post #83
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?

No, it didn't get enough before because everyone thought they'd need some shiny sh t. Instead TUI's work just fine for a lot of things while consuming less of your computers resources as well as being easy on your eyes and state of mind (no hectic blinking and notification banners and sounds distracting you from everything you do). Just because we have more resources and faster computers doesn't mean we should max th…

I wonder about the TUIs consuming less resources. Sure, compared to something like Electron, they will, but on the other hand, pretty much everyone is running a TUI in a graphical terminal - often a terminal with unicode support, utf-8 decoding and antialiasing, sometimes subpixel antialiasing with all that overhead it has. In that environment trying to, e.g., fill a silver rectangular area implies sending all the ANSI escape codes to move the cursor and change the current color, send a ton of characters that represent a "full" block, have the terminal emulator parse all that and then fill the area with lots of tiny rectangles (assuming it does know about the full block character and doesn't just defer to the font engine which does the full block drawing itself using the entire text rendering stack).

In comparison a GUI application would just draw a filled rectangle. For a local X11 application or OpenGL application this may even done as a hardware accelerated operation without even touching any pipes.

To me the "graphical" side of a TUI (which is pretty much most of it) sounds way more heavy than the equivalent of a GUI.

Re: Meli email client, pre-alpha release

#86

Post by Crinus »

zzo38computer wrote: post #39
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.)

> and most widget sets don't implement scrollbars like Xaw

Do you consider Xaw scrollbars a feature? They feel totally inconvenient to use with their weird "the position you click at is the amount to scroll and the button to use is the direction to scroll" behavior. The only way i use such a scrollbar myself is with middle clicking since that is the only way i find them usable.

Re: Meli email client, pre-alpha release

#87

Post by SyneRyder »

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 willing to pay, someone please give me a decent cross platform alternative with a GUI, ideally a proper, non-electron one.

Have you tried Postbox? It's cross-platform Mac/Windows, native non-Electron (actually forked from Thunderbird long ago), supports multiple accounts, lots of keyboard shortcuts & paid non-subscription product developed by a company. I've been using it ever since Eudora died, it's the closest I've found to that Eudora power user workflow. It's a GUI app though, not a terminal app.

https://postbox-inc.com/

Re: Meli email client, pre-alpha release

#88

Post by VvR-Ox »

Crinus wrote: post #85
VvR-Ox wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it didn't get enough before because everyone thought they'd need some shiny sh t. Instead TUI's work just fine for a lot of things while consuming less of your computers resources as well as being easy on your eyes and state of mind (no hectic blinking and notification banners and sounds distracting you from everything you do). Just because we have more resources and faster computers doesn't mean we should max th…

I wonder about the TUIs consuming less resources. Sure, compared to something like Electron, they will, but on the other hand, pretty much everyone is running a TUI in a graphical terminal - often a terminal with unicode support, utf-8 decoding and antialiasing, sometimes subpixel antialiasing with all that overhead it has. In that environment trying to, e.g., fill a silver rectangular area implies sending all the AN…

That's an interesting point and I can't really compare that.

But I noticed with an old thinkpad (x220) that I can reduce overall resource consumption and prolong battery life just by switching everything I can to a more terminal-centered workflow.

Ranger consumes less than dolphin, I use NMTUI because i3wm doesn't have a clickable task bar item for configuring WiFi (at least in my setup) and VIM/NVIM consume less than VSCode, IntelliJ, Atom or other editors.

Clearly there is a difference when you compare an electron app to some other running in the JVM or natively but in the end I have the feeling that terminal apps run better and faster.

Another very important thing in my opinion is the possibility to use these apps via SSH which is still my preferred way to remotely use computers (no VNC, RDP, teamviewer etc.).

Re: Meli email client, pre-alpha release

#89

Post by OJFord »

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…

There's also Mailpile, which is GUI (webapp) but FOSS self-hostable.

https://github.com/mailpile/Mailpile

Re: Meli email client, pre-alpha release

#90

Post by CalRobert »

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?

For anyone else unfamiliar with the term, TUI appears to refer to "Text-Based User Interface"
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