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Aerc: A well-crafted TUI for email

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Re: Aerc: A well-crafted TUI for email

#101

Post by kkfx »

zokier wrote: post #71
kkfx wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Very right indeed, maybe then:

- GUI :: graphical UI, typically NOT easy to mold by the end users, mostly widget based UIs, as their main characteristic or the user of them is more a consumer than a producer of something;

- CLI :: a REPL, typically a terminal, but definitively not only that, their users enter commands, read responses as main characteristic;

- TUI :: a 2D UI (typically though it could probably be also a 3D and 4D one) easy to be mold by the end user, the user is both a producer and a consumer as their main characteristic. An WYSIWYG editor is a kind of TUI in that regard, an Emacs buffer is another since in both text can be entered somewhat freely and can became "active" like clickable links. The user read, or consume, but also write, or produce.

An ncurses UI should be TUI being text-based and 2D but still lack the user mold part so well... Still unsure how to classify the acronym...

Re: Aerc: A well-crafted TUI for email

#102

Post by Ringz »

jackthetab wrote: post #82
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 in the Gmail integration. Tried it with mutt and decided I didn't want to spend an afternoon figuring it out. 'Sides, I hear that Gmail is phasing out IMAP. :-?

> 'Sides, I hear that Gmail is phasing out IMAP. :-?

Uh? Really?

Re: Aerc: A well-crafted TUI for email

#106

Post by eddd-ddde »

jjav wrote: post #74
daft_pink wrote: post #43

I would really love to try a terminal email client with html email parsing. I miss pine.

mutt is alive and well, it's all I use for email. At work I'm forced to use the unusable gmail website, ugh.

Curious what's unusable about gmail. I love the UI plus I also love the sidebar with tasks, calendar, etc.

For me outlook is the real pain, I just redirect my emails there to my gmail.

Re: Aerc: A well-crafted TUI for email

#107

Post by johntash »

pmarreck wrote: post #81

There's one big drawback I discovered the hard way, to not storing emails locally. If you have to leave an org for any reason, you lose access to the entire email history with that org. Some of which might still be important to you for a multitude of very legitimate reasons (such as contacts).

Assuming by org you mean an employer - this is also a benefit. For legal reasons, you may not want to have a copy of any of those emails anymore, or at least your employer may not want you to.

I try to forward important e-mails to myself if I think I'll need them outside of work (insurance details, etc).

Re: Aerc: A well-crafted TUI for email

#108

Post by Tmpod »

nout wrote: post #103

That's pretty cool! I think it could use a bit more polish with the UI, maybe allow theming (for reference I did a theme for midnight commander recently - which is imo the best TUI - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40741464 )

aerc is completely themable through what they call "style sets": https://man.sr.ht/~rjarry/aerc/configurations/stylesets.md

Re: Aerc: A well-crafted TUI for email

#109

Post by djha-skin »

I have plumbed the depths of mutt, and I have discovered that, alas, graphical email clients fit my needs better.

- Mutt/aerc doesn't support windows, an OS many use by preference or requirement (though I have explored this with mutt[2], it's hard getting anything to work in mailcap on windows)

- Doesn't support viewing HTML email, a ubiquitous phenomenon

- Doesn't support sending HTML email, which is fine until your coworkers wonder why your mails always look funky and replies lose formatting

- I'm faster in Betterbird[1] than I am in mutt. Turns out drag-and-dropping mails into folders is pretty fast.

- Configuring an even halfway decent set-up takes ages, Betterbird just works out of the box

- Mutt relies on mbsync[3] or offlineimap[4], these tools don't support OAuth well. Betterbird supports it out of the box. (You can run without them, if you're willing to put up with bad buggy behavior in GMail where when messages are moved into folders they are only copied, the original message stays put in the original folder while a new message is copied into the other.)

- With shift+click, Betterbird allows the user to reply or compose using plain text just fine when the need arises

Sorry guys. I absolutely live in the terminal, but enough's enough. I'm out.

I do like using newsboat as an RSS reader though, that investment panned out so far.

1: https://www.betterbird.eu/

2: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39812124

3: https://isync.sourceforge.io/mbsync.html

4: https://www.offlineimap.org/

Re: Aerc: A well-crafted TUI for email

#110

Post by Falkon1313 »

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.

It's been in use since at least the late 1980s to early 1990s. I believe it was in the Turbo Pascal for DOS documentation I used back then, as well as Turbo Vision and some other things. I also worked on a TUI library for Euphoria in DOS around that time.

And it means a full-screen Text User Interface, which is quite different from a line-oriented CLI (Command Line Interface). Instead of a command line, you have a full screen interface with menus, dialogs, buttons, checkboxes and radios, listboxes, windows, scrollbars, etc. Just all in text mode using things like the box drawing and shading characters.

So at least 30 years ago. Probably the early 80s, although I'm not sure of that. But that's when some programs started going from CLI or forms-based to actually using that full-screen TUI style.

The earlier forms-based programs were basically just a hard-coded text-mode screen with blank fields that you could fill in the blanks, then hit a key to either submit, escape back out, or use a hotkey to pull up a different form screen. They didn't have the various interface widgets that we got used to with the TUIs and later GUIs.

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