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Meli email client, pre-alpha release

meli.delivery

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Re: Meli email client, pre-alpha release

#121

Post by z3t4 »

fetbaffe wrote: post #50
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…

I still find Opera Mail works best, even though it is unmaintained. It has superfast search and not as sluggish as Thunderbird.

With Opera mail you can create many Bayesian filters to categorize your inbox. The obvious category is spam, but you can also have it automatically categorize into business clients projects offers family etc, each type of newsletter can have its own category.

Re: Meli email client, pre-alpha release

#122

Post by crispinb »

celticmusic wrote: post #110
crispinb wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 abo…

I have my gmail accounts forward to fastmail (And then filter). I've had this setup for years now, not sure exactly but easily 5+ years, and I'm super happy with it. I do really wish I could find a better email client though, but Thunderbird is "good enough" for now. I don't get a warm fuzzy feeling using it, but I also don't rage at it not working constantly.

I was thinking of just using the Fastmail web app. I found it (like gmail) better than any current desktop email client I've tried.

Re: Meli email client, pre-alpha release

#123

Post by zzo38computer »

Crinus wrote: post #86
zzo38computer wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I consider it a feature. It might be better if right-clicking used the distance from the end instead of from the beginning as the amount to move (so that the clicked position would then be on the bottom of the screen, like left-clicking scrolls the clicked position to the top of the screen) (but also, maybe it isn't better that way), but it is still better than Microsoft scrollbars I think. I use all three clicks on it, and I think it isn't inconvenient; it is good.

Re: Meli email client, pre-alpha release

#124

Post by z3t4 »

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?

If it gets the job done, and creates some value for the user, the user will go over hoops in order to use it (even pay money) ... I find it funny that we are still emulating old terminals. And still building new apps for them. Plain text however gets the job done. It's very powerful to search for a solution on the web, and find instructions on how to do just about anything by copy/pasting a bunch of commands into the terminal. Personally however I prefer GUI's because I can't seem to remember all the commands or keyboard-keybindings unless I use them daily. And if done correctly, a graphics interface can be more intuitive and have better feature discovery compared to a text interface.

Re: Meli email client, pre-alpha release

#125

Post by _delirium »

sthottingal wrote: post #30

A big disadvantage with TUI based email clients is it can only work with English or latin script based languages. Complex scripts( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_text_layout ) does not render properly in terminals.

This depends on the terminal. Konsole, mlterm, and Apple's Terminal.app can do complex text layout.

Recent versions of Emacs support a modern text-shaping engine, Harfbuzz, when run in GUI mode, which is another option for emacs-based mail clients. I guess it's maybe not technically a TUI in this case, but emacs mail clients are still very TUI-like, even when run in non-terminal emacs.

Re: Meli email client, pre-alpha release

#126

Post by _delirium »

hawski wrote: post #76
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 wonder if it would be possible to do a GUI mostly-drop-in replacement for ncurses. Immediate advantages, at least for me: - a possibility to use proportional fonts, it's more pleasant for me and increases content density - borders and other decorations could be smaller, increasing density - smooth scrolling could be implemented, which is nice - it could better integrate with desktop environment Possible and very mu…

Emacs in a way does something like this: just about any emacs app (including mail clients) can run in either terminal emacs or GUI emacs, and the GUI version supports proportional fonts, images, etc. Of course building your TUI app on top of emacs instead of ncurses isn't for everyone.

Re: Meli email client, pre-alpha release

#127

Post by cyphar »

Fnoord wrote: post #115
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…

You can switch the last one (web browsing) to TUI as well via Browsh [1]. Uses Firefox internally. [1] https://www.brow.sh/

I have been looking at trying out things like Vimperator to get a feel for no-mouse web browsing. But that looks even neater, I'll definitely give it a shot. :D

Re: Meli email client, pre-alpha release

#128

Post by em-bee »

Fnoord wrote: post #116
pushpop wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Some TUIs even have mouse (optional) support.

vim has that, and it drives me nuts. i use the mouse to select text in a terminal to copy it elsewhere outside of the terminal, but when vim is running that doesn't work, and i end up disabling mouse support every time because of that.

Re: Meli email client, pre-alpha release

#129

Post by em-bee »

skarlso wrote: post #41

Is everyone forgetting about mutt ( http://www.mutt.org/ ) being a thing?

i used mutt for many years. i even used to hang out with mutts creator. but when i discovered sup with its tag based virtual folders and the ability to keep state in multiple buffers at once i never looked back. i'll look at aerc and meli once they support notmuch...

Re: Meli email client, pre-alpha release

#130

Post by pushpop »

em-bee wrote: post #128
Fnoord wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some TUIs even have mouse (optional) support.

vim has that, and it drives me nuts. i use the mouse to select text in a terminal to copy it elsewhere outside of the terminal, but when vim is running that doesn't work, and i end up disabling mouse support every time because of that.

Yeah, mouse support seems a little pointless at the best of times but in vim it’s down right annoying.
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