Sylpheed – a simple, lightweight but featureful e-mail client(sylpheed.sraoss.jp)
sylpheed.sraoss.jp
Sylpheed – a simple, lightweight but featureful e-mail client
http://sylpheed.sraoss.jp/en/
133 comments
What Claws [1] (a Sylpheed fork) has over Thunderbird is noticeable the moment you start it: speed. While Thunderbird is still busily indexing its bits, Claws has you reading your first message.
Another thing it offers is an easy way to edit the 'From' address without needing to go through the hassle of creating an identity. For those who, like me, use special addresses any time they need to contact a commercial or governmental entity this makes life a lot easier.
Just like Thunderbird, Claws supports extensions for things like PGP support, Sieve filter support, etc.
Due to its speed and relatively low memory footprint Claws is a good choice for low-memory and/or low-cpu devices.
[1] http://www.claws-mail.org/
Another thing it offers is an easy way to edit the 'From' address without needing to go through the hassle of creating an identity. For those who, like me, use special addresses any time they need to contact a commercial or governmental entity this makes life a lot easier.
Just like Thunderbird, Claws supports extensions for things like PGP support, Sieve filter support, etc.
Due to its speed and relatively low memory footprint Claws is a good choice for low-memory and/or low-cpu devices.
[1] http://www.claws-mail.org/
I second that 100%. Using Sylpheed, Sylpheed Claws, then Claws Mail since early 2000s and never had any issues. It runs circles around Thunderbird and others speed wise because it was initially written when hardware limitations forced one to choose the right tool for the job and not simply pick the most famous language. At one time I had more than 10 email accounts and creating folders for each one plus filters to redirect incoming emails was straightforward; it's so fast that even today I keep in my Mail directory all mails since day one, including backups imported from other softwares. That means all mail since 1996, and it still loads instantly.
To edit the From address in outgoing email with Thunderbird, try the Virtual Identity extension.
The really nice thing about Virtual Identity is that it remembers which From address you use for each To address. Additionally, if you reply to someone that you've not written to before, VI uses the incoming mail's To address as the outgoing mail's From address.
The really nice thing about Virtual Identity is that it remembers which From address you use for each To address. Additionally, if you reply to someone that you've not written to before, VI uses the incoming mail's To address as the outgoing mail's From address.
I've tried Virtual Identity several times, several versions, but it always ended up making it impossible to read or send mail. When the extension was active I could not open messages (got empty windows), disabling the extension made everything right again. When it works Virtual Identity works well, but unfortunately it rarely works - at least for me.
Thunderbird allows editing the From header. I think this was a recent change from last year. I deleted my huge identity list.
> Due to its speed and relatively low memory footprint Claws is a good choice for low-memory and/or low-cpu devices.
I tried running claws-mail on my old N900. Just opening my basic IMAP inbox with 20,000 messages in it exhausted the memory of the device. I have some folders with 200,000 messages. This was a while ago, so things may have improved, since.
The only client I've ever successfully run on such low-memory systems is webmail, or something like the Android mail client, which simply doesn't bother to look at more than a few hundred messages. The UX in both cases is abysmal, but they provide some functionality, which is a step up.
I may not be a typical e-mail user.
I tried running claws-mail on my old N900. Just opening my basic IMAP inbox with 20,000 messages in it exhausted the memory of the device. I have some folders with 200,000 messages. This was a while ago, so things may have improved, since.
The only client I've ever successfully run on such low-memory systems is webmail, or something like the Android mail client, which simply doesn't bother to look at more than a few hundred messages. The UX in both cases is abysmal, but they provide some functionality, which is a step up.
I may not be a typical e-mail user.
A N900 has 256 MB (plus 768MB 'swap') and as such is rather memory- (and CPU-) restrained. Still, looking at my current running instance of Claws (on a T42p, 2GB/1.8 GHz Pentium M) the process has a resident size of 32 MB. The currently opened mailbox contains 4417 messages (I need to archive a few of these...), the IMAP folder tree contains around 300.000 messages. In comparison, browsing the same folder in mutt takes 20 MB.
I just tested it on a folder containing 40.000 message (list archive), this increases the RSS to 82 MB. The same folder in mutt takes 64 MB. In other words, the 'penalty' paid for a GUI instead of a TUI is around 10MB + ~15%.
I just tested it on a folder containing 40.000 message (list archive), this increases the RSS to 82 MB. The same folder in mutt takes 64 MB. In other words, the 'penalty' paid for a GUI instead of a TUI is around 10MB + ~15%.
Thunderbird is slow, I agree. But, it has some tools that make it easier for me to manage my huge volume of mail; plugins for auto-archiving, etc. The quick search feature is almost usable (compared to completely useless on most mail clients), which I guess is where the "indexing its bits" time is going to. It is a reasonable trade off for me, for now.
I've never really loved a mail client, so saying I prefer Thunderbird is somewhat faint praise. Actually, maybe I love GMail (which is interesting, because making a web app that beats a native app is incredibly hard).
I've never really loved a mail client, so saying I prefer Thunderbird is somewhat faint praise. Actually, maybe I love GMail (which is interesting, because making a web app that beats a native app is incredibly hard).
Hmm. I remember Claws from when I had an N810. It wasn't the greatest mail client at the time, but in part that was the lack of power / screen real-estate on the N810.
I should give it a try again sometime.
I should give it a try again sometime.
I also have made bad experiences with evolution. I wonder why major distributions still use it as their default client. Is there some good reason for that, or is it just neglect?
Because it's the email client that supports Exchange the best and related calendar/email features have been split off into daemons that provide things like email messaging and calendar notifications that integrate into the desktop.
The reality is that all desktop email clients suck and suffer from neglect. Mostly because hard-core people are using things like mutt or emacs for mail and everybody else is using webmail.
The reality is that IMAP effectively failed as a standard. The idea of 'mail folders' is somewhat of a improvement over the mbox format, but there was never any sort of search features or mail filtering features that became standardized for IMAP servers. There are a few aborted attempts and ways to program mail filtering, of course, but nothing that really works well or isn't confusing as hell for normal people.
Webmail effectively started off as browser-based IMAP clients, but they have progressed far far beyond that and solved most of the issues with syncing email to desktops, laptops, and phones.
Probably the answer to fixing this issue is going back to simple POP protocol and then using something like Notmuch to use 'search-like' features to logically group email into folders and such things without destructively editing emails like IMAP does. By this I mean with IMAP and maildir you are editing and moving files around on a remote file system and this means that if something goes wrong the mail gets duplicated or corrupted or out of order or whatever. By using a database-type approach with notmuch you are not touching the original emails for the most part, but simply editing and modifying metadata. The original structure and such are preserved.
The reality is that all desktop email clients suck and suffer from neglect. Mostly because hard-core people are using things like mutt or emacs for mail and everybody else is using webmail.
The reality is that IMAP effectively failed as a standard. The idea of 'mail folders' is somewhat of a improvement over the mbox format, but there was never any sort of search features or mail filtering features that became standardized for IMAP servers. There are a few aborted attempts and ways to program mail filtering, of course, but nothing that really works well or isn't confusing as hell for normal people.
Webmail effectively started off as browser-based IMAP clients, but they have progressed far far beyond that and solved most of the issues with syncing email to desktops, laptops, and phones.
Probably the answer to fixing this issue is going back to simple POP protocol and then using something like Notmuch to use 'search-like' features to logically group email into folders and such things without destructively editing emails like IMAP does. By this I mean with IMAP and maildir you are editing and moving files around on a remote file system and this means that if something goes wrong the mail gets duplicated or corrupted or out of order or whatever. By using a database-type approach with notmuch you are not touching the original emails for the most part, but simply editing and modifying metadata. The original structure and such are preserved.
Not sure what you mean by "there was never any sort of search features or mail filtering features that became standardized for IMAP servers."
Search is built into the IMAP protocol. [1]
Filtering doesn't belong at the IMAP protocol layer anymore than it belongs at the SMTP layer. That said, "Sieve" is really powerful, and there are many SMTP and IMAP servers which support it.
[1] https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3501#section-6.4.4
Search is built into the IMAP protocol. [1]
Filtering doesn't belong at the IMAP protocol layer anymore than it belongs at the SMTP layer. That said, "Sieve" is really powerful, and there are many SMTP and IMAP servers which support it.
[1] https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3501#section-6.4.4
ok, 'search that does not suck' isn't a feature of IMAP.
> Filtering doesn't belong at the IMAP protocol layer anymore than it belongs at the SMTP layer.
Right, so users are forced to set up this stuff for each and every device they have. This is a big reason why the exodus to webmail and the proprietary internal-only protocols they use.
Seive is really powerful and I've used it plenty of times, but it's not standard and is something that needs to be done completely separate from almost all email clients. Unless you are a big email nerd that runs your own servers it's pretty much worthless.
> Filtering doesn't belong at the IMAP protocol layer anymore than it belongs at the SMTP layer.
Right, so users are forced to set up this stuff for each and every device they have. This is a big reason why the exodus to webmail and the proprietary internal-only protocols they use.
Seive is really powerful and I've used it plenty of times, but it's not standard and is something that needs to be done completely separate from almost all email clients. Unless you are a big email nerd that runs your own servers it's pretty much worthless.
What sucks about IMAP search? I linked to the protocol in my previous comment. It's pretty damn comprehensive in what it offers...
You can get desktop and web based and command line clients which talk the ManageSieve protocol so provide you with an interface to manage your server based sieve mail filters [1]
I'll agree that it's not common. Not because there is anything wrong with it, but because companies like Google decided to roll their own for whatever reason.
[1] http://sieve.info/clients
You can get desktop and web based and command line clients which talk the ManageSieve protocol so provide you with an interface to manage your server based sieve mail filters [1]
I'll agree that it's not common. Not because there is anything wrong with it, but because companies like Google decided to roll their own for whatever reason.
[1] http://sieve.info/clients
IMAP Search support only ASCII and you cannot search non-English content. There is an extension for utf-8, but Some of the major emails services as Outlook/Ofiice365 doesn't support it.
Also, you can search only a particular folder instead entire mailbox.
Fair points. I guess I've never had to search for non-ASCII text. Hopefully the UTF-8 extension will gain support over time.
I can see use cases for needing to search across multiple folders. I guess I've not felt the need to do that myself before. However, no reason your IMAP client couldn't search folders one after the other, or open multiple connections and search multiple folders simultaneously.
I can see use cases for needing to search across multiple folders. I guess I've not felt the need to do that myself before. However, no reason your IMAP client couldn't search folders one after the other, or open multiple connections and search multiple folders simultaneously.
> Sieve is really powerful and I've used it plenty of times, but it's not standard
It is, actually. https://wiki.tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5804
> something that needs to be done completely separate from almost all email clients.
In that it is not part of IMAP, yes. However, webmail clients like Roundcube and desktop clients like Thunderbird and Claws/Sylpheed all offer plugins.
It is, actually. https://wiki.tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5804
> something that needs to be done completely separate from almost all email clients.
In that it is not part of IMAP, yes. However, webmail clients like Roundcube and desktop clients like Thunderbird and Claws/Sylpheed all offer plugins.
I have tried Evolution off and on ever since Ximian released it back in the day. It always seemed buggy and bloated (even a year or two ago when I was just using it for Calendar integration I would find freak out and eat up 100% cpu randomly). I always went back to mutt or sup, or more recently I tried Geary. Recently (<6 months?) I tried evolution again and I am blown away with how reliable it is. The search is great, everything works. It's not a very exciting e-mail client, but it gets the job done better than any other (while integrating very nicely into gnome).
What do you mean major distributions use evolution as the default email client ? AFAIK almost all major distros give you the choice of the desktop environment you want if you want one.
When you choose the gnome flavor of said distros, I suppose that it comes with evolution because it is the official default email client for gnome until its replacement, geary, is ready. But last time I checked in 2015 it was still in early stages of development despite having started circa 2012.
When you choose the gnome flavor of said distros, I suppose that it comes with evolution because it is the official default email client for gnome until its replacement, geary, is ready. But last time I checked in 2015 it was still in early stages of development despite having started circa 2012.
I'm forced at work to use an exchange account (so that implies using the calendar). Evolution was the only program I found that works on ubuntu and supports exchange somewhat (I didn't want at all to use the exchange web interface).
So yeah, its a bit buggy, but it works for me
So yeah, its a bit buggy, but it works for me
If you don't mind having jre on your system and running a daemon: http://davmail.sourceforge.net/
Then you can use any client you want.
Then you can use any client you want.
I thought thunderbird was not actively maintained? This is great if that is the case.
That was the last I heard too, but it seems to be actively updated. For example,
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/52.0/releasenotes/
Does anyone know the story?
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/52.0/releasenotes/
Does anyone know the story?
There have been a couple of discussions here and elsewhere about it. My understanding is that Thunderbird is no longer a priority project for Mozilla Foundation and has no full-time developers paid by Mozilla, but it still uses Mozilla resources, and a number of volunteers continue to maintain it.
So, it's kinda in the category of Sylpheed or Claws, in that it no longer has major corporate sponsors, I guess. I think Evolution has a bit more corporate sponsorship (Red Hat, which has developers working full-time on it, while SuSE stopped funding its development a while back; I don't think Canonical contributes in any significant way, either), so if having a corporate developer behind the mail client is necessary, I guess Evolution is the only choice for Linux users.
Frankly, I wish Red Hat, and everybody else, would put its people on Thunderbird. It's far from perfect, but it's farther from awful than Evolution. But, I don't need Exchange integration, so I may be missing the big picture for corporate users.
So, it's kinda in the category of Sylpheed or Claws, in that it no longer has major corporate sponsors, I guess. I think Evolution has a bit more corporate sponsorship (Red Hat, which has developers working full-time on it, while SuSE stopped funding its development a while back; I don't think Canonical contributes in any significant way, either), so if having a corporate developer behind the mail client is necessary, I guess Evolution is the only choice for Linux users.
Frankly, I wish Red Hat, and everybody else, would put its people on Thunderbird. It's far from perfect, but it's farther from awful than Evolution. But, I don't need Exchange integration, so I may be missing the big picture for corporate users.
The Thunderbird community is quite active, as can be seen by the activity in the tb-planning mailing list (https://mail.mozilla.org/pipermail/tb-planning/).
They know they have to pivot to a more modern codebase, and have been discussing modernizing TB on a regular basis. Most of the traffic in April is about a "Proposal to start a new implementation of Thunderbird based on web technologies". Go read it!
They know they have to pivot to a more modern codebase, and have been discussing modernizing TB on a regular basis. Most of the traffic in April is about a "Proposal to start a new implementation of Thunderbird based on web technologies". Go read it!
A rewrite with a skeleton crew sounds like a disaster waiting to happen. Mozilla got a ground up rewrite, and even with big resources and a big team, it nearly killed Mozilla.
Then again, the tools are much better than ever. Building desktop apps can move very fast with Electron (or similar) and the like. Nonetheless, I think I'm on the pessimistic side of the argument about a total rewrite. I wish them well, but I suspect it'll fizzle out, as previous similar efforts have.
Then again, the tools are much better than ever. Building desktop apps can move very fast with Electron (or similar) and the like. Nonetheless, I think I'm on the pessimistic side of the argument about a total rewrite. I wish them well, but I suspect it'll fizzle out, as previous similar efforts have.
I'm not sure which Mozilla rewrite you're talking about, but in any case I feel that rewriting TB is doable. As you say there are better tools/frameworks, and the work done by asuth on the FirefoxOS mail client and glodastrophe (https://github.com/asutherland/glodastrophe) are good starting points.
Oh, you're in a for a treat! Jamie Zawinski wrote wonderfully on the topic of the rewrite of Netscape Navigator (e.g. Mozilla): https://www.jwz.org/gruntle/nomo.html
There have been other posts about it, but that's a reasonable place to start. Spolsky has also written about the dangers of rewrites, including Mozilla as one very public case study.
Interestingly, jwz also had a lot of things to say about the mail client that became Thunderbird, back when it was part of the Netscape suite.
There's a really long history with the Mozilla projects, and many lessons have had to be learned multiple times. I wonder if perhaps this is one of those occasions. Then again, the best thing that ever happened to Mozilla was Firefox, and that was one lone programmer deciding to (kinda) rewrite the damned thing to be lean and mean and scuttle all of the ancillary crap that Mozilla had accrued over the years. Maybe Thunderbird needs the same treatment...but, where's the Blake Ross to do it?
There have been other posts about it, but that's a reasonable place to start. Spolsky has also written about the dangers of rewrites, including Mozilla as one very public case study.
Interestingly, jwz also had a lot of things to say about the mail client that became Thunderbird, back when it was part of the Netscape suite.
There's a really long history with the Mozilla projects, and many lessons have had to be learned multiple times. I wonder if perhaps this is one of those occasions. Then again, the best thing that ever happened to Mozilla was Firefox, and that was one lone programmer deciding to (kinda) rewrite the damned thing to be lean and mean and scuttle all of the ancillary crap that Mozilla had accrued over the years. Maybe Thunderbird needs the same treatment...but, where's the Blake Ross to do it?
jwz isn't exactly a fan of "Hacker" "News". You may want to open that link in incognito mode.
Are you worried he can come through the internet to reap holy vengeance on all who click through to an article on his site?
Yes.
Additionally, you'll be treated to some specially prepared, uh, eggs if you click through to his site from HN.
Additionally, you'll be treated to some specially prepared, uh, eggs if you click through to his site from HN.
Well, that's disappointing.
A rewrite with web technologies... please no.
Why? TB UI is currently in XUL which is a markup language like... the web. A lot of the TB backend is in js, like... the web.
well I guess the UI is alright. But I wouldn't like to see the core rewritten in JS.
IIRC 5 years ago mozilla announced that thunderbird was not a priority anymore and considered dropping it.
Then 1 or 2 years ago mozilla announced that thunderbird sharing the firefox codebase was unnecessarily taxing firefox and the remaining thunderbird developers were struggling to follow the pace of firefox. Moreover that they believed thunderbird had little potential to have an impact as firefox has. So they proposed to separate thunderbird from firefox and cut the ties entirely.
Last news I heard was that Thunderbird could join seamonkey and become a community effort with some backing from mozilla[1].
[1]: http://www.ghacks.net/2017/03/10/seamonkey-thunderbird-to-jo...
Then 1 or 2 years ago mozilla announced that thunderbird sharing the firefox codebase was unnecessarily taxing firefox and the remaining thunderbird developers were struggling to follow the pace of firefox. Moreover that they believed thunderbird had little potential to have an impact as firefox has. So they proposed to separate thunderbird from firefox and cut the ties entirely.
Last news I heard was that Thunderbird could join seamonkey and become a community effort with some backing from mozilla[1].
[1]: http://www.ghacks.net/2017/03/10/seamonkey-thunderbird-to-jo...
Those screenshots should really be updated.
Assuming the desktop is GNOME is a bold assumption, AFAIK there's no gnome under OSX nor windows, and personally GNOME has displayed so much bad faith and disdain for the need of its users that even if it were the best desktop available I would not touch it with a 10 foot stick. Also GTK applications usually do not look bad under KDE or LXDE or cinnamon, etc.
That being said the official screenshots are horribly dated, maybe more than 10 years. They feature version 2.2 while current version is 3.5.1 better than words here a screenshot of sylpheed 3.5.1 under a plasma 5 desktop: https://framapic.org/W9q8F6IAArBR/6aCKA6Wpk87V.png
I tried a variety of email client and none have been fully satisfying, evolution was really painful to use and half-broken most of the time, it's been a while since I've used thunderbird and though it tends to work I have no plan to go back until it offers the possibility to prevent access with a password as the mozilla suite offered. Mutt was nice but I moved away for personal preferences. Right now I use kmail which I recommend you do NOT use, far from being the pain evolution was, it mostly work most of the time but when it does not you're in for a ride, the main drawback is the akonadi backend that offers nothing I want or need and gives me headache. every other day I have stop and restart akonadi so the new mails would show in my inbox, once in a while it fails silently to send email, the documentation is sparse and the bug reports are scary[1] and the fix you may finally find are not obvious[2]. I had hopes in trojita but last time I checked it was still not ready for daily use after years of development. I had even better hopes for caliopen[3] but current roadmap says late 2018.
The good news is KDE has been working on replacing akonadi by Sink which is supposed to have learned from their mistakes and address the weak points of akonadi , and replacing kmail with kube which will leverage Sink and be consistent with roundcube next. Bad news is they've been at it for a couple years now and it's not done yet.
Next in line for me to give a try are elementary OS' mail[4] and notmuch in emacs (also exists for vim).
[1]: https://bugs.kde.org/buglist.cgi?component=general&order=cha...
[2]: http://www.dvratil.cz/2017/01/kmail-multiple-merge-candidate...
[3]: https://www.caliopen.org/en/
[4]: https://elementary.io/#showcase-mail
That being said the official screenshots are horribly dated, maybe more than 10 years. They feature version 2.2 while current version is 3.5.1 better than words here a screenshot of sylpheed 3.5.1 under a plasma 5 desktop: https://framapic.org/W9q8F6IAArBR/6aCKA6Wpk87V.png
I tried a variety of email client and none have been fully satisfying, evolution was really painful to use and half-broken most of the time, it's been a while since I've used thunderbird and though it tends to work I have no plan to go back until it offers the possibility to prevent access with a password as the mozilla suite offered. Mutt was nice but I moved away for personal preferences. Right now I use kmail which I recommend you do NOT use, far from being the pain evolution was, it mostly work most of the time but when it does not you're in for a ride, the main drawback is the akonadi backend that offers nothing I want or need and gives me headache. every other day I have stop and restart akonadi so the new mails would show in my inbox, once in a while it fails silently to send email, the documentation is sparse and the bug reports are scary[1] and the fix you may finally find are not obvious[2]. I had hopes in trojita but last time I checked it was still not ready for daily use after years of development. I had even better hopes for caliopen[3] but current roadmap says late 2018.
The good news is KDE has been working on replacing akonadi by Sink which is supposed to have learned from their mistakes and address the weak points of akonadi , and replacing kmail with kube which will leverage Sink and be consistent with roundcube next. Bad news is they've been at it for a couple years now and it's not done yet.
Next in line for me to give a try are elementary OS' mail[4] and notmuch in emacs (also exists for vim).
[1]: https://bugs.kde.org/buglist.cgi?component=general&order=cha...
[2]: http://www.dvratil.cz/2017/01/kmail-multiple-merge-candidate...
[3]: https://www.caliopen.org/en/
[4]: https://elementary.io/#showcase-mail
Sylpheed is my all-time favorite e-mail app.
In late 2001 I brought a Vaio C1 [1] back from Japan. 192 MB ram, Transmeta Crusoe processor that could burst to 600 MHz. Running Windows ME _everything_ was slow out of the box, but with Linux (Slackware), a minimal window manager (forget if it was XFCE, Enlightenment, or something else), and Sylpheed it just flew. Even with huge numbers of messages everything was snappy. It was amazing.
I switched from Linux to Mac in 2009 and migrated to Mail.app at the time. It's not terrible, but even on recent hardware it feels more sluggish than Sylpheed did on that underpowered ultraportable in 2001.
Good to see that it's still getting occasional updates 16 years later.
1. http://www.sony.jp/ProductsPark/Consumer/PCOM/PCG-C1VSX/
In late 2001 I brought a Vaio C1 [1] back from Japan. 192 MB ram, Transmeta Crusoe processor that could burst to 600 MHz. Running Windows ME _everything_ was slow out of the box, but with Linux (Slackware), a minimal window manager (forget if it was XFCE, Enlightenment, or something else), and Sylpheed it just flew. Even with huge numbers of messages everything was snappy. It was amazing.
I switched from Linux to Mac in 2009 and migrated to Mail.app at the time. It's not terrible, but even on recent hardware it feels more sluggish than Sylpheed did on that underpowered ultraportable in 2001.
Good to see that it's still getting occasional updates 16 years later.
1. http://www.sony.jp/ProductsPark/Consumer/PCOM/PCG-C1VSX/
I used Sylpheed in 2001 for awhile before moving mostly to mutt. Recently, I found my old Sylpheed mail folders. 16 years later Sylpheed reads those mail folders and works just like it did back in the day. Still very fast and responsive too.
With MacOS, I particularly love MailMate.
It's been with me for years, and I love how it handles the flow of editing mail messages. You take care of the contents, it takes care of formatting. If you've ever tried LaTeX, it's a similar concept.
It's been with me for years, and I love how it handles the flow of editing mail messages. You take care of the contents, it takes care of formatting. If you've ever tried LaTeX, it's a similar concept.
Used mailmate when Mail.app was slightly buggy some years ago but then got tired of mailmate being buggy as well (iirc, takes seconds selecting multiple mails, changes column width after showing mail folders on/off, message signature inserting unnecessary new line and crashes randomly and never had those fixed in a year or something), I switched back to Mail.app in Sierra, seems responsive and trouble free so far.
i've been using spark on all my apple devices and i love it. reminds me of sparrow, before google gobbled them up.
https://sparkmailapp.com/
https://sparkmailapp.com/
How does it compare with Claws Mail [0]?
I've always assumed Claws is the more full-featured fork of Sylpheed, but seeing that they've diverged over a decade ago and are both still in development I'm curious how they compare.
[0] http://www.claws-mail.org/
I've always assumed Claws is the more full-featured fork of Sylpheed, but seeing that they've diverged over a decade ago and are both still in development I'm curious how they compare.
[0] http://www.claws-mail.org/
http://www.claws-mail.org/faq/index.php/General_Information#...
Back in 2001 Claws Mail (formerly Sylpheed-Claws) started as the bleeding-edge version of Sylpheed, in order to act as a testbed for new features for Sylpheed. The idea was to regularly resync with Hiroyuki's main branch, and vice-versa. Claws Mail then evolved into the stable, extended version of Sylpheed, and in 2006 became an entity in its own right, in part due to different goals and the fact that syncing both codebases stopped happening. Claws Mail has many extra features compared to Sylpheed and is more powerful, yet is just as fast, lightweight and stable.
Back in 2001 Claws Mail (formerly Sylpheed-Claws) started as the bleeding-edge version of Sylpheed, in order to act as a testbed for new features for Sylpheed. The idea was to regularly resync with Hiroyuki's main branch, and vice-versa. Claws Mail then evolved into the stable, extended version of Sylpheed, and in 2006 became an entity in its own right, in part due to different goals and the fact that syncing both codebases stopped happening. Claws Mail has many extra features compared to Sylpheed and is more powerful, yet is just as fast, lightweight and stable.
Well, considering that was written a decade ago, it doesn't really answer my question...
http://www.claws-mail.org/faq/index.php?title=General_Inform...
http://www.claws-mail.org/faq/index.php?title=General_Inform...
I'm looking at the screenshots there and getting shuddering flashbacks to when I used to use Linux as my full-time desktop environment.
The composition window which "helpfully" provides a breakdown of "Headers", "Attachments", and "Other" tabs. The preferences panel which thinks customizing the date format -- using strftime format strings -- is something that needs a preference...
The composition window which "helpfully" provides a breakdown of "Headers", "Attachments", and "Other" tabs. The preferences panel which thinks customizing the date format -- using strftime format strings -- is something that needs a preference...
You can get the same preference-laden programs for MacOS (which, for some reason, I assume you now use) and Windows, this is not a Linux-thing. Linux users who want to have things decided for them can use Gnome [1] or Unity [2], no such 'superfluous' preferences or extraneous tabs there. Linux does not equate complexity, nor does MacOS or Windows equate sane defaults and simplicity (iTunes comes to mind as an anti-example).
The fact that these programs persist for such a long time indicates that there are people who prefer to make their own choices, no matter how superfluous these might seem in others eyes.
[1] https://www.gnome.org/ look ma, no preferences... [2] https://unity.ubuntu.com/ look ma, no future...
The fact that these programs persist for such a long time indicates that there are people who prefer to make their own choices, no matter how superfluous these might seem in others eyes.
[1] https://www.gnome.org/ look ma, no preferences... [2] https://unity.ubuntu.com/ look ma, no future...
For last few years (after geting bitten by yet another breakage when upgrading evolution) I'm using claws-mail which is fork of sylpheed and it does everything I need from email client (and in contrast to evolution it even has usable windows version).
I have about the same experience, but with Thunderbird. Once I got my accounts set up in Sylpheed/Claws (I have used both) I found it did everything I needed, Its extremely stable has minimal dependency and uses negligible CPU and memory.
I can compile Sylpheed form sources it in a few minutes on any recent version of Linux or BSD with little or no dependencies.
I can compile Sylpheed form sources it in a few minutes on any recent version of Linux or BSD with little or no dependencies.
Not unlike many others, I use Thunderbird and sometimes think about switching to something else (main reasons are speed and usability). But I guess what many of us need much more than better email client is better email workflow. I have dozens of filters and always keep my inbox empty, and yet I think may be the real thing is I don't really manage my emails properly. Maybe I just need to set up this filter to delete stuff instead of moving it (I'm not really keen on deleting stuff in general, always feels unsafe and shortsighted), maybe I need some other system.
By the way, using Gmail web-interface (and Gmail is not the only mail provider I use) feels almost as unsatisfactory, as Thunderbird: ok, filters and search are a bit better, and it physically cannot hung-up my whole system under load, but otherwise it is as needy and clumsy as Thunderbird. I remember receiving several thousands of emails overnight because of some programmers mistake, and deleting it was quite painful: I'd gladly tell Gmail "just delete all this stuff" (by filter), but I didn't find any way to do so, I had to fall back to slowly manually deleting my mail by 200-item batches.
Would be interesting to hear how other people manage their mailboxes.
By the way, using Gmail web-interface (and Gmail is not the only mail provider I use) feels almost as unsatisfactory, as Thunderbird: ok, filters and search are a bit better, and it physically cannot hung-up my whole system under load, but otherwise it is as needy and clumsy as Thunderbird. I remember receiving several thousands of emails overnight because of some programmers mistake, and deleting it was quite painful: I'd gladly tell Gmail "just delete all this stuff" (by filter), but I didn't find any way to do so, I had to fall back to slowly manually deleting my mail by 200-item batches.
Would be interesting to hear how other people manage their mailboxes.
HTML vs plaintext
The plaintext email only nature resonated with me for long time but many email and chat services have gone rich text and it's great. Why I say that...I used to use claws mail for many years for business email but being able to at least make text bold or add an inline image is valuable. For personal email mutt is great for me and Gmail too nowadays but for business to business, HTML is required.
It took me a while to get Thunderbird to mimick Claws. Thunderbird is much slower and crashing randomly frequently but is the best from the crowd.
Does Claws Mail allow me to write HTML styled messages?
No. A discussion has gone around over this topic, and the outcome was that HTML mail is not wanted. If you really need to send HTML, you can of course attach a webpage to an e-mail.
http://www.claws-mail.org/faq/index.php/General_Information#...
The plaintext email only nature resonated with me for long time but many email and chat services have gone rich text and it's great. Why I say that...I used to use claws mail for many years for business email but being able to at least make text bold or add an inline image is valuable. For personal email mutt is great for me and Gmail too nowadays but for business to business, HTML is required.
It took me a while to get Thunderbird to mimick Claws. Thunderbird is much slower and crashing randomly frequently but is the best from the crowd.
Does Claws Mail allow me to write HTML styled messages?
No. A discussion has gone around over this topic, and the outcome was that HTML mail is not wanted. If you really need to send HTML, you can of course attach a webpage to an e-mail.
http://www.claws-mail.org/faq/index.php/General_Information#...
Thunderbird's slowness and other quirks got me to switch from it to the Windows mail app when I'm on Windows... suffice to say I don't recommend it.
It looks nice and all, but isn't necessarily all that much faster, doesn't always render HTML email all that well, and has pieces of basic functionality mysteriously missing (i.e., to this day it doesn't understand what the Reply-To header is for).
Chalk it up as another in a long line of Thunderbird alternatives that just don't measure up. I'd love to have something else I like (especially now in the twilight of XUL) but it's just a tough space.
It looks nice and all, but isn't necessarily all that much faster, doesn't always render HTML email all that well, and has pieces of basic functionality mysteriously missing (i.e., to this day it doesn't understand what the Reply-To header is for).
Chalk it up as another in a long line of Thunderbird alternatives that just don't measure up. I'd love to have something else I like (especially now in the twilight of XUL) but it's just a tough space.
Wow its ugly.
While people might or not might trust google etc. The spam filter and the ui from gmail is just to good to switch to any offline client.
I'm only using thunderbird for pgp mails.
While people might or not might trust google etc. The spam filter and the ui from gmail is just to good to switch to any offline client.
I'm only using thunderbird for pgp mails.
Gmail's UI is terrible. Where do people get the opinion that it's good? It's slow, nonintuitive, requires I click a button to see updates new emails on a thread, the filtering/labels are terribly limited... I could go on
Fast flexible searches and spam filters that work better than anything else I've tried. I put up with other issues for these two things.
I don't use an offline client because I use a home desktop, phone, and work desktop that aren't the same os.
I don't use an offline client because I use a home desktop, phone, and work desktop that aren't the same os.
That's because you have not tried the antispam solution that you have to pay for. To me gmail and its spam filter is a curse, I self host my own mail server and despite it being up to date to the latest recommended best practice, sometime for no apparent reason and for a limited period of time gmail will silently drop my legit emails into the spam folder of my recipient. I've grown to really dislike gmail for not caring about smaller servers who do their best to do it right.
I have heard people complain about false positives, but I check from time to time and don't see any.
I am using the paid Gmail product, no idea if that makes it any different.
I assume the volume they deal in would make a Bayesian filter more effective.
I am using the paid Gmail product, no idea if that makes it any different.
I assume the volume they deal in would make a Bayesian filter more effective.
But it's not the best spam filter
Don't leave us hanging.
Everyone I've moved to Fastmail has found its spam filtering to be superior. It was the first thing my wife noticed.
Ah, ok. Thanks. It appears they use SpamAssasin under the covers. https://www.fastmail.com/help/technical/spamchecks.html
I may be not seeing issues as we spent a fair amount of time using the "report spam" and "not spam" buttons when we first signed up for Google Apps, so it's been trained to our use case. It works very well for us.
I may be not seeing issues as we spent a fair amount of time using the "report spam" and "not spam" buttons when we first signed up for Google Apps, so it's been trained to our use case. It works very well for us.
They also have a very clever greylisting approach -- it compares against senders in your address book as one point of data which I've never seen done before because usually the spam filters I've run don't have access to that data and no open source greylist daemons do it to my knowledge
Gmail has keybindings for most actions I think.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=gmail+keybindings&atb=v16&ia=cheat...
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=gmail+keybindings&atb=v16&ia=cheat...
Believe it or not but I know people in a small non benefit org I manage that are totally lost in GMail.
I had a request today to stop archiving or deleting mails older than three months. I never do that. They just hadn't figured out the paging buttons in the upper right of the interface. They had been thinking there were only 50 mails available in all of Gmail until this morning. They don't get the conversation model of GMail
Most used to use Office Outlook.
I had a request today to stop archiving or deleting mails older than three months. I never do that. They just hadn't figured out the paging buttons in the upper right of the interface. They had been thinking there were only 50 mails available in all of Gmail until this morning. They don't get the conversation model of GMail
Most used to use Office Outlook.
> The spam filter ... is just to good to switch to any offline client.
Your Gmail account is available over POP3 and IMAP. That means you enjoy the same spam filtering regardless of whether your use Gmail in your web browser or a dedicated e-mail client like Sylpheed.
Your Gmail account is available over POP3 and IMAP. That means you enjoy the same spam filtering regardless of whether your use Gmail in your web browser or a dedicated e-mail client like Sylpheed.
It makes me think that these people have never used an offline email client and don't understand what pop and imap are.
First email client was outlook express, than thunderbird, than gmail.
I tried mutt, i tried others.
I'm not syncing my mails anymore i just get an pop up from my webbrowser that a new email is here.
I also use different computers (home desktop, home laptop, work desktop) and prefer the same ui with the same settings on all pcs. The browser became in some way, my operating system for mails.
I tried mutt, i tried others.
I'm not syncing my mails anymore i just get an pop up from my webbrowser that a new email is here.
I also use different computers (home desktop, home laptop, work desktop) and prefer the same ui with the same settings on all pcs. The browser became in some way, my operating system for mails.
Is it that surprising? Webmail has existed for longer than most people have had email and it's not tied to a job or ISP like the previous most popular options were.
Most of the gmail users I know are a bit clueless and lacking in the technical domain and don't understand what an email client is because they've only ever used webmails. So I would not be surprised if they were unaware of pop and imap.
I use Sylpheed on a Windows PC. I don't find it ugly, although I can see that some people might find the app 'old fashioned' in appearance.
I switched to Sylpheed from Thunderbird, which is arguably uglier, slower and more clunky in operation (at least on Windows).
In an age of fat, slow, memory-hogging Electron apps (often produced by large companies with lots of developers), Slypheed is a refreshing example of a slim, cross-platform desktop app maintained by just a single developer. It should serve as inspiration for others.
I switched to Sylpheed from Thunderbird, which is arguably uglier, slower and more clunky in operation (at least on Windows).
In an age of fat, slow, memory-hogging Electron apps (often produced by large companies with lots of developers), Slypheed is a refreshing example of a slim, cross-platform desktop app maintained by just a single developer. It should serve as inspiration for others.
I agree. I started using apple mail and then Nylas but reverted back to gmail web interface after a few months. Unless you want to store emails locally email clients don't make sense.
Having multiple email accounts like most people (including exchange emails for work) Apple mail has been the only email client I've ever enjoyed using since it's not super fancy and doesn't feel bulky or ugly. It's clear which email I'm sending from and works relatively quickly. I also like not having to have another tab in my browser always open just for email and this is one of those cases I'm okay with an application always open like a terminal. I looked into nydus but having to have create another account to access my emails seemed odd to me.
I don't understand all these people saying it's ugly. It's gtk. The screenshots are old. Gtk these days looks modern,you can make it look however you want depending on what theme you choose. https://www.gnome-look.org/browse/cat/135/ord/latest/
Yet nobody took this project seriously enough to update the screenshot (nor the ugly website) in 15 years by the looks of it.
I never really understood that. People do all this work on some software yet don't spend a minute making a half decent website, the first impression of all their work. It's a shame.
I never really understood that. People do all this work on some software yet don't spend a minute making a half decent website, the first impression of all their work. It's a shame.
>a half decent website
And what is wrong with current site?
And what is wrong with current site?
Sylpheed is GTK2, those screenshots are GTK3.
Please, you have Gtk2 skins category just below the Gtk3 skins category.
I use both the Gmail web interface (at work) and notmuch-mode from within Emacs as an offline client. My evaluation: notmuch has a nice local search interface, supports tags and threaded views and handles PGP, but is similar enough to the Gmail interface. I find it much easier to use: https://notmuchmail.org/screenshots/
By coincidence, I used Sylpheed before and Thunderbird before that. I found both easier to learn than notmuch-mode, but ultimately lacking, especially regarding handling of encrypted messages.
By coincidence, I used Sylpheed before and Thunderbird before that. I found both easier to learn than notmuch-mode, but ultimately lacking, especially regarding handling of encrypted messages.
Brutalism is big in web design right now. Never thought that would translate to app UI.
http://arngren.net
http://arngren.net
Sylpheed has been ugly for 15+ years.
(not that I don't appreciate utilitarian design. Claws and Emacs come to mind.)
(not that I don't appreciate utilitarian design. Claws and Emacs come to mind.)
Arngren's web page has been like that for years, not much new there.
If you looked at the screenshots, they are severely outdated (like obsolete for about 10 years).
it's not the shiniest UI around but the current one is hardly ugly.
it's not the shiniest UI around but the current one is hardly ugly.
>ugly
Matter of taste. I personally find it much more comfortable than gmail ui - less clutter and much faster
>spam filter
Works on server, used MUA does not affect it
Matter of taste. I personally find it much more comfortable than gmail ui - less clutter and much faster
>spam filter
Works on server, used MUA does not affect it
Must admit I am somewhat jaded with current mail applications and actually creating my own. Sylpheed is wonderful and the one I currently use, it's fast and works. My problem is with the GUI. Every single linked email client in this thread looks like it has come from 2005 and, unsurprisingly, most of them were created around then.
Hoping that maybe by using some more modern libraries, and aiming for a material design-esque client, I might be able to make something easy to use and reliable.
Hoping that maybe by using some more modern libraries, and aiming for a material design-esque client, I might be able to make something easy to use and reliable.
I wrote a mail-client, mine is console based with lua-scripting. I figured, when I started, that the task was simple, there are MIME-libraries, etc, out there, so to create a simple mail-client I only had to write three things:
* A view of all maildirs/folders.
* An index-view to show the contents of a maildir/folder.
* A view of a single message.
How naive I was. Broken email is everywhere. Things like IMAP support, GPG-support, and similar took months to get done. That moment when you're checking email in your spam-folder and your mail-client crashes? That happened far too often.
Writing a mail client isn't hard, but it is fiddly, and you don't realize it until you think you're done. (UTF-handling, malformed MIME-messages, etc etc.)
In the most sincere way possible: good luck!
* A view of all maildirs/folders.
* An index-view to show the contents of a maildir/folder.
* A view of a single message.
How naive I was. Broken email is everywhere. Things like IMAP support, GPG-support, and similar took months to get done. That moment when you're checking email in your spam-folder and your mail-client crashes? That happened far too often.
Writing a mail client isn't hard, but it is fiddly, and you don't realize it until you think you're done. (UTF-handling, malformed MIME-messages, etc etc.)
In the most sincere way possible: good luck!
I've upvoted you, because I think we need more e-mail clients. Actually, I was thinking about creating one myself as well.
Would you perhaps consider working together instead of on two separate projects? Half the workload for both of us to get the same final product!
I'm currently involved in writing a hex editor for big files (i.e. disk images), because I felt world needed one as well :), I already have a significant amount of code, it would be a waste if I'd switch projects now. Thanks for asking though. Working solo is hard, both for motivation and the amount of work that needs to be done. If I wouldn't have my current project I would definitely pair up with someone!
Is it open source and are you looking for contributors? If I can help, I'll contribute.
Honoured to have your first post Benjie. It is open-source and made in Electron, but I'm not sure it's upto much at the moment. I've mostly been working on getting IMAP and SMTP setup as opposed to any graphical work.
If you're interested in helping out, I'd love any help I can get. Email me at the address on my profile page and I can give you some more details. The current design looks as follows:
https://puu.sh/vmtT6/b803a88da5.png
If you're interested in helping out, I'd love any help I can get. Email me at the address on my profile page and I can give you some more details. The current design looks as follows:
https://puu.sh/vmtT6/b803a88da5.png
I used Sylpheed a lot in the past. Very fast, clean, simple and reliable. But switched to Notmuch (with Emacs UI) years ago for its great flexibility and programmability, and due to my general preference for using Emacs modes over separate applications.
Sylpheed is lack of good HTML render engine. That's why I still not change to Claws or Sylpheed because its. This time is 2017, and I don't want to read and imagining about the figure that was appeared as text description in email.
I don't use this myself but in theory it should work:
$ apt show claws-mail-fancy-plugin
Package: claws-mail-fancy-plugin
Version: 3.14.1-3+b1
...
Description: HTML mail viewer using GTK+2 WebKit
This plugin for Claws Mail allows rendering of HTML email messages
in the message window.
.
It uses the GTK+2 port of the webkit library to render HTML.
.
Supports printing HTML mails when html2ps package is installed.Of course, some people think of this as a Feature.
Trojita is my client of choice so far, I might have to reevaluate that again?
IIANM Trojita is limited to a single imap account which makes it almost useless to me, as I would have to have an additional email client for the other accounts.
Last time I checked trojita was still a work in progress with missing features and was not ready for production and daily use. Is it ready now ?
Last time I checked trojita was still a work in progress with missing features and was not ready for production and daily use. Is it ready now ?
I like trojita and used it for several months recently. It does a lot right, but the biggest reason I stopped using it is a lack of an address book, or some other form of email address autocomplete. Having to lookup old emails to figure out someones email address is just a deal breaker -- especially because the search isn't all that great either.
Trojita is a really well written client. Fastest GUI based email client I've used, easily. They're still lacking on full PGP support though so I'm sticking to mutt for now.
Jan is one of the most active client authors on the standards lists. He really cares about getting the details right. It's nice to see!
As a point of comparison: why should I switch from Thunderbird to Sylpheed?
Why switch? I'll tell you why I switched from Thunderbird to Claws.
I got sick of Thunderbird's pathological memory leaking. I start by email client when I log in and leave it running indefinitely (days-weeks). Thunderbird continually started out at 1 GB but grew over time without limit, even if only sitting idle, collecting mail. After a couple of days it would be creeping north of 6 GB. Several times it drove my PC into pathological swapping, making the PC impossible to use and extremely difficult even to get control of to shut down.
Claws is currently using 0.1 GB, even after running for a week.
I got sick of Thunderbird's pathological memory leaking. I start by email client when I log in and leave it running indefinitely (days-weeks). Thunderbird continually started out at 1 GB but grew over time without limit, even if only sitting idle, collecting mail. After a couple of days it would be creeping north of 6 GB. Several times it drove my PC into pathological swapping, making the PC impossible to use and extremely difficult even to get control of to shut down.
Claws is currently using 0.1 GB, even after running for a week.
Thunderbird user for over a decade here, on both Linux and Windows, and have not seen this happen, ever. Firefox, I'd agree and it still does on Linux. Never had a problem with Thunderbird other than the disappearing Outlook calendars.
I used Thunderbird for a long time and then switched to Sylpheed. For one its about as good an email client as Thunderbird. That's all I really used TB for. If I want to use a calendar TB is not my first choice. I would rather use something along the lines of a project manager that has gnatt charts etc. So for email Sylpheed is elegant and lightweight and focused. I check my inbox and get my mail done then close it down and get back to what I was working on. Where as with TB I constantly had it open in the background and ended up messing with calendar and to-do more or less procrastinating.
Super fast and lightweight. That's what I liked about it.
I'm yet to see a mail client that allows me to rename all contacts that have a specified email, then search by using those changed names. I mean, I don't want to get e-mails from "F4taL ErRoR <[email protected]>", I want to get e-mails from "John Smith <[email protected]>". Some clients kind of allow me to do that kind of aliasing, but then indexing and searching for those aliases don't work. Claws mail is one of them, Thunderbird as well.
I've used Sylpheed for years and I miss it. I stopped using it because I switched to OSX at some point. But it's a beautiful piece of software.
brew install sylpheed
It is compiled and linked using the native X libraries on OS X, so it looks quite decent. There are versions using XQuartz, but I have had problems with the font rendering.
It is compiled and linked using the native X libraries on OS X, so it looks quite decent. There are versions using XQuartz, but I have had problems with the font rendering.
slighty off topic, but there are mail client that support at-rest encryption?
For varius reason i need to run a mail client from a usb key, and i could't find a client that support the ability to encrypt the mailbox (also with addressbook and for windows). Veracrypt and similar solution are not applicable in my case.
For varius reason i need to run a mail client from a usb key, and i could't find a client that support the ability to encrypt the mailbox (also with addressbook and for windows). Veracrypt and similar solution are not applicable in my case.
If your client supports PGP, you can always implement something like:
https://www.grepular.com/Automatically_Encrypting_all_Incomi...
https://www.grepular.com/Automatically_Encrypting_all_Incomi...
i will look into that, it seem a step-up from my current setup.
Thanks
Why container encryption is not suitable for you? If security of the host is a concern, you have to trust the host with any mail client anyway.
Most of the time i don't have admin access, witch is required for whole drive encryption (as far as i know).
Right now i encrypt and decrypt the whole config folder of the mail client inside the usbkey, then delete it with a secure delete software. It works, but is not very convinient.
Also more that the host, i don't trust myself not loosing the usbkey :)
Also more that the host, i don't trust myself not loosing the usbkey :)
I remember something called tutanota or totanuta that advertised itself as encrypting the data on the device itself (phone, tablet, computer,...).
https://tutanota.com/ is an email service with end-to-end encryption. It has web UI and doesn't store data on the device.
Unfortunaly i need the mail to be stored on the device since i need to be able to access them even offline.
I cannot understand the relevance of an email client, now that browsers can do email. It may be my workflow, so I will ask:
Is there any scenario where an email client would be necessary - i.e. a browser based solution will not work?
Is there any scenario where an email client would be necessary - i.e. a browser based solution will not work?
> Is there any scenario where an email client would be necessary - i.e. a browser based solution will not work?
Here's one: multiple email accounts that you need to check on a regular basis. I would lose my mind if I had to track my emails across three different web interfaces.
Here's one: multiple email accounts that you need to check on a regular basis. I would lose my mind if I had to track my emails across three different web interfaces.
If you have an email address that is not gmail, which browser email client will you use?
Wow, this brings back memories! I used Syplheed Claws when I was still running Mandrake - before it was merged and became Mandriva.
last version for macOS 18 Apr 2014
Does it still misses RFC 2177?
Pretty sure most applications don't need to support RFC 2177 to still be efficient. Long-polling for most IMAP servers requires one packet every nine minutes (to the best of my knowledge), which is literally nothing. It would take months of being run constantly to even get up to a megabyte of data being transferred. Some rough back of the envelope calculations:
- 10 minutes per poll, 1440 minutes in a day, 144 packets per day.
- 50 bytes per packet, 1,000,000 bytes to a megabyte, 20,000 packets required.
- Roughly 140 days of time, or 5 months to reach a single megabyte.
Aren't there some optimisations that are so minuscule it isn't worth implementing them?
- 10 minutes per poll, 1440 minutes in a day, 144 packets per day.
- 50 bytes per packet, 1,000,000 bytes to a megabyte, 20,000 packets required.
- Roughly 140 days of time, or 5 months to reach a single megabyte.
Aren't there some optimisations that are so minuscule it isn't worth implementing them?
Of course but it so satisfying to reduce the overhead further. The struggle to reduce a megabyte of overhead by half a megabyte is great while knocking half a megabyte off a gigabyte is often trivial.
I'm not arguing that anyone should try shaving the megabyte of course.
I'm not arguing that anyone should try shaving the megabyte of course.
Not to be confused with:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silpheed
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silpheed
I always end up going back to Thunderbird, for a variety of reasons. But, I try a bunch of other stuff every now and then. Sylpheed is not bad, but it's not got anything I don't get from Thunderbird, and Thunderbird is more actively maintained and has more capabilities. (I keep trying Evolution, and hating it, every single time. It's huge and thinks really hard about every single action and continues to be buggy. I don't know how something has been in really active development for decades and still has weird quirks and misbehavior without any actionable error messages.)