I might be missing something but why would you want to use a terminal interface when a GUI is so much easier?
Convenience is valuable, but the sense of coolness is equally important. Perhaps it's all about the feeling.
Aerc: A well-crafted TUI for email
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Re: Aerc: A well-crafted TUI for email
#32I might be missing something but why would you want to use a terminal interface when a GUI is so much easier?
focus, performance on old/low power hardware.
Re: Aerc: A well-crafted TUI for email
#33I might be missing something but why would you want to use a terminal interface when a GUI is so much easier?
There is a different social contract between GUI and CLI project maintainers and their users. A menu item can be renamed or moved around and the only thing that breaks is the mental model of users who knew precisely where that menu item was; a CLI option, for example, cannot be renamed or removed without breaking someone's automated script.
Given that difference, some people prefer the stability of their tools not changing on them and prefer CLI/terminal work in general. The difference in social contract may not apply specifically to an email client but a given user might be more comfortable in a terminal than in a GUI.
Re: Aerc: A well-crafted TUI for email
#34Looks good but wish it was written in C.
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Re: Aerc: A well-crafted TUI for email
#35I might be missing something but why would you want to use a terminal interface when a GUI is so much easier?
Operation via single-character keyboard commands is really fast in TUI emails clients. In principle a GUI client could offer the same, but I haven’t seen one that does to the same degree. A GUI might be “easier”, but is less efficient for the power user.
Another reason that is more idiosyncratic: If you operate your own email server, you can SSH in from everywhere and use a TUI client locally on the server. This saves the transferring/syncing of emails between client-side local storage and the server; everything is just immediately available.
Re: Aerc: A well-crafted TUI for email
#36Looks good but wish it was written in C.
For anyone else wondering, it is written in Go.
Re: Aerc: A well-crafted TUI for email
#37The problem with a TUI is that it’s a silo. Makes more sense to have pipeable, scriptable program(s) to retrieve/filter/sync/send. Then you can make several different UIs for it—vim, emacs, web, vscode, acme, thick client, etc—with a minimum of effort. TUI ends up re-implementing a good part of tmux unnecessarily.
Composability is what I love about Notmuch: https://notmuchmail.org/
The Notmuch client is also really well done.
Re: Aerc: A well-crafted TUI for email
#38I might be missing something but why would you want to use a terminal interface when a GUI is so much easier?
I'm guessing that the text interface is nicer if your use case is reading mostly text-based emails from newsletters or forums. But yeah, for general email use I don't see this as a plus unless you really like TUIs.
Re: Aerc: A well-crafted TUI for email
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your are indeed! Many people like myself prefer the lightning fast interaction of keyboard navigation, the mastery of the bindings to improve workflows, and the customization of bindings to create new ones.
ok but GMail for example has keyboard shortcuts.
Yeah, but I don’t have to learn new shortcuts since I can configure Aerc exactly like I want (and how my mental VIM shortcut model works).