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Meli email client, pre-alpha release

meli.delivery

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Re: Meli email client, pre-alpha release

#71

Post by jakecopp »

em-bee wrote: post #67
jakecopp wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just heard about the GPD Pocket for the first time, it's a fascinating little thing! What is the keyboard like to type on and how fast can you type? Where did you purchase it?

i am not a trained typist, so i primarily type with index fingers and thumbs. that makes small keyboards much less of a problem than otherwise (before the GPD Pocket i was using an OLPC XO), and i type on it almost as fast as on a bigger one. i got the first model of that series during their crowdfunding campaign. (it's their second product that they released 2 years ago) the keyboard on that was a bit wobbly, occasi…

Thanks for such a detailed comment :)

That is worrying that keys would stop working. I'd definitely be interested in a cheaper model with an ARM processor primarily for remote development on the go.

Re: Meli email client, pre-alpha release

#72

Post by em-bee »

jakecopp wrote: post #71
em-bee wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i am not a trained typist, so i primarily type with index fingers and thumbs. that makes small keyboards much less of a problem than otherwise (before the GPD Pocket i was using an OLPC XO), and i type on it almost as fast as on a bigger one. i got the first model of that series during their crowdfunding campaign. (it's their second product that they released 2 years ago) the keyboard on that was a bit wobbly, occasi…

Thanks for such a detailed comment :) That is worrying that keys would stop working. I'd definitely be interested in a cheaper model with an ARM processor primarily for remote development on the go.

the keys don't stop working, just sometimes the keypress does not register. it's also only a few keys where i saw this happen.

but that's the first model. current models are supposed to have much better keyboards

Re: Meli email client, pre-alpha release

#73

Post by cycomanic »

apatters wrote: post #27

> one row per thread Woohoo! Hope this project gets a lot of love and support, because this has always been my preferred way to view threads. Can anyone recommend a more complete Linux mail client (TUI or GUI) that works this way, akin to Gmail's conversation view? Thunderbird theoretically can with some extensions but I've never quite managed to get it to work right. My other issue with switching to a TUI mail clien…

I've you're using notmuch astroid is an excellent client. Fast responsive gui, but totally controllable with the keyboard.

Re: Meli email client, pre-alpha release

#74

Post by stinos »

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.

Of all problems Thunderbird has, the look and feel of the UI is the least of my problems actually. Maybe it's just how I use mail, but probably like 90% of interaction with the UI is that white space where I read and type email text. I don't really care, or even notice, what's shown around that white space.

Re: Meli email client, pre-alpha release

#75

Post by zevv »

No one mentioning Alot?

https://github.com/pazz/alot https://alot.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

Alot is a terminal-based mail user agent for the notmuch mail system. It features a modular and command prompt driven interface to provide a full MUA experience as an alternative to the Emacs mode shipped with notmuch.

Re: Meli email client, pre-alpha release

#76

Post by hawski »

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 much desired extensions:

- basic image and video support

- possibility to use different font sizes

It would still be limited to a coarse grid, but that's what makes development easy.

I never looked beyond superficial it's possible or easy enough to do. I also don't have much experience, beyond basics with ncurses.

Re: Meli email client, pre-alpha release

#77

Post by Crinus »

cricalix wrote: post #64
vnorilo wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a thought experiment, how would the stack differ from Qt, which runs just about everywhere and has bindings for a huge range of languages?

The one thing that always put me off of the Qt, Wx etc libraries is that it felt like you have to be fairly deep in the weeds with layouts. HTML + CSS ( + something like a framework perhaps for JS niceness) feels much easier, because the browser does the heavy work of laying out the elements for you, resizing them etc. Maybe I've just not sat down long enough to poke the UI work, but every time I have sat down it's f…

Why not use the UI designer? It was made exactly for this reason.

Re: Meli email client, pre-alpha release

#78

Post by Crinus »

michaelmrose wrote: post #68
crispinb wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's right. It's kind of sad. After decades of explosive tech growth, we're left with there being no really good modern desktop OS, and no cross-platform GUI that approaches the potential of the medium. It's a fragmented mess, full of accidental complexity & user frustration.

What is complicated about linux Mint or even Debian?

Gtk3 is awful and broke backwards compatibility with Gtk2 so you need to have at least those two in your system to run applications (since many still need Gtk2). Gtk2 does not get any meaningful updates anymore. Gtk4 will soon be released and repeat the cycle.

Same with Qt5, anything that needs Qt4 or less is now broken unless you use Slackware which tries to keep everything it ever had (it even has Gtk1). Qt5 is made by a company whose income doesn't come from desktop apps anymore and certainly not from being a stable API for a desktop environment. Though even if they wanted, C++ lacking a stable ABI doesn't help much.

The only alternative would be Motif but that hasn't got any meaningful update since the 90s and is only limping in life thanks to a company whose income seem to come from consulting about converting your Motif app to Qt.

Other toolkits either rely on one of the above, have largely been ignored and/or are even less stable than Gtk.

And the majority of all toolkits are way too bloated, not just in terms of resource use but also in terms of how easy they are for a developer to master them.

Re: Meli email client, pre-alpha release

#79

Post by enriquto »

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?

> 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, for one, cannot get enough of this. Faced with the choice of a performant and full-featured GUI and a slightly slower and worse TUI, I get to chose the text interface 100% of the time. It is so much more convenient!

Re: Meli email client, pre-alpha release

#80

Post by blub »

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?

You're observing something else: software people are the only ones obsessed enough with improving their tools to continuously debate and re-invent them.

Sadly this obsessive search for the ultimate workflow becomes a goal unto itself, leading to a life-long unsuccessful and unsatisfying search that is doomed to fail.

Meanwhile, in the real world GUIs have long superseded any text-based UIs, speciality tasks aside. E-mail is not a special task...

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