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Aerc: A well-crafted TUI for email

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Re: Aerc: A well-crafted TUI for email

#71

Post by zokier »

kkfx wrote: post #61
syntaxing wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dont know when it exactly started but I've heard and use this term at least 15 years. CLI != TUI. TUI is more like a "standard" window (GUI) but all text based.

Well... CLI is Command Line Interface, or a classic ./name --options reading output in a terminal and writing options, piping to other tools to tweak the output. It's good for some usages, and for scripting, but not much for event-loop based activities. TUI, Textual User Interface today tend to be a 2D terminal graphic, from ncurses to framebuffer. Classically it's simply a 2D UI based on text, so for instance Plan 9…

CLIs can be graphical too! One classic example is AutoCAD:

> The command line interface provides an important method for controlling AutoCAD. For many users, it is the primary input method. The command line is also used for displaying and selecting command options.

https://help.autodesk.com/view/OARX/2024/ENU/?guid=GUID-F145...

Re: Aerc: A well-crafted TUI for email

#72

Post by BeetleB »

tjoff wrote: post #6

aerc is really weird in the sense of being designed as a client, not storing the mails on your computer. Which has some performance implications and limitations. Though you can have local mail too, really felt like a second-class feature when I looked. But to be fair it has been a long time since I looked at it. Given the above I'm really surprised that IMAP doesn't work better than it does. Often gets disconnected a…

> aerc is really weird in the sense of being designed as a client, not storing the mails on your computer.

Isn't that true for mutt as well?

Re: Aerc: A well-crafted TUI for email

#73

Post by BeetleB »

Swarming wrote: post #10

I might be missing something but why would you want to use a terminal interface when a GUI is so much easier?

Really short answer: Because the GUIs for mail SW are just not that great. It's been a long time since I used something like Thunderbird, but for the webmails I use, as well as Outlook at work - both tend to have inferior UIs than a good TUI.[1]

Another short answer: A lot of people prefer to use the keyboard. While it's true you can do a lot of keyboard navigation in some GUIs, but they still tend to be inferior to what you can do in a GUI.

Another answer: Performance. GUIs in general are laggy.

Another answer: What are my choices for GUIs for local mail? I always store mail locally on my PC and use a mail SW to interact with them.

Fundamentally, GUI developers optimize for different things compared to TUI developers.

Finally:

> but why would you want to use a terminal interface when a GUI is so much easier?

I think you'll find that the HN crowd values a few things higher than "ease". Yes, GUIs tend to be easier. Just like using IFTT is easier than writing code. Yet, many people prefer to write code.

[1] I mean OK, perhaps for a thing or two they're better, but not overall.

Re: Aerc: A well-crafted TUI for email

#75

Post by BeetleB »

abound wrote: post #62

I got sick of having five different GMail tabs open (and two non-GMail mail tabs open), so I have been setting up aerc this week, using the Notmuch backend and either lieer (for GMail) or mbsync (for non-GMail) to sync the mail. Its taken maybe a dozen hours to get it set up and get into the flow, but I find it much, much more enjoyable than my previous workflow. Plus, though GMail tabs each took a 100+ MB of memory…

> so I have been setting up aerc this week, using the Notmuch backend

I strongly urge people to try notmuch. I switched to it in around 2011 and have never gone back.

You don't have to use Emacs as the client. There are plenty of other frontends (including aerc).

https://notmuchmail.org/frontends/

alot[1] is probably the most well known among them:

https://github.com/pazz/alot

Re: Aerc: A well-crafted TUI for email

#76

Post by jjav »

kkfx wrote: post #55

The issues we humans have with emails in the present time lay in the lack of modern PERSONAL email tools development. For modern and personal I mean NOT living on someone else mailserver but easily download or sync remote IMAPs, or to use them directly (with some issues [1]) or via a personal homeserver IMAP, with a modern search-based client like notmuch-emacs/mu4e, and a built-in decent filtering tool (like MailDro…

> modern PERSONAL email tools

The capitalized personal part there is so important! So few people today even realize what is possible, since they are captive in websites like gmail that have so very little functionality.

email was always supposed to have a 100% customizable workflow, filtering, sorting, foldering, etc.

We still have this of course, as all the old tools work. But there needs to be more awareness how great email is when used as originally intended. I'd despise email too if I believed gmail is email, but it's not.

procmail and mutt still work just fine!

Re: Aerc: A well-crafted TUI for email

#77

Post by xyst »

I frequently have to send e-mails from different addresses, so it seems I need to have manage multiple .conf files for this to work correctly? Example:

- login user: example@example.com - alises: *@example.com, postmaster@example.com, abuse@example.com ...

Mail addressed to "ex@example.com" is delivered to "example@example.com" inbox. But instead of replying from "example@example.com", I would prefer to reply via "ex@example.com"

Thunderbird offers the feature to modify the "from" header for each mail (which is nice). So I am curious how I would be able to do this with Aerc without having to constantly fiddle with the configuration files (ie, create new conf, add conf entry, ...)

Re: Aerc: A well-crafted TUI for email

#78

Post by icambron »

Ringz wrote: post #66

Aerc has been my daily driver for a long, long time. I use it with IMAP (GMail and other reasons) but its completely usable with local mail directories. - I have redefined the Aerc key mapping with a set of Vim-like keybindings, since I am too old to learn new keybindings. And I bet now I as fast as possible slashing through countless mails… - I configured Aerc to work properly with Gmail and Imapfilter. - I created…

I'm interested, specifically with the vim keybindings, which would make getting started with it much easier for me.

Re: Aerc: A well-crafted TUI for email

#80

Post by pvg »

superkuh wrote: post #46

This is the first I've read of "TUI" standing for what I have to assume is "terminal user interface"? I'd call them CLI (command line interface). When did this TUI acronym start? What does it mean? Everyone else seems to know it and use it without defining.

You've charted an incredibly fortuitous TUI-avoiding path through your HN reading, it pops up constantly. Just in the last year:

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastYear&page=0&prefix=fal...

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