dovecot - Feb 2010 - OT: best linux imap client for dovecot

Hi,

I'm a long term dovecot user, packager and believer, but on the other
side of the wire I've been a mutt user for longer than I can think.

Which modern email client under Linux is working best with dovecot? I
just did a grep on User-Agent:/X-Mailer: on my dovecot archive (which
goes back to 2004) and found that the top ten are:

28% Thunderbird
25% Evolution
 9% Apple Mail
 9% Mutt
 5% Mozilla
 3% KMail
 2% Outlook
 2% SquirrelMail
 1% Alpine
 1% Mulberry
...

So it looks like most Linux people here like to use Thunderbird and
Evolution.

This is not a my-email-client-is-better-than-your-email-client thread,
I just want to know which client(s) make proper use of imap features
for fast searches/copies/deletions etc.

Thanks!
-- 
Axel.Thimm at ATrpms.net
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 198 bytes
Desc: not available
URL:
<http://dovecot.org/pipermail/dovecot/attachments/20100218/a45cfd97/attachment-0002.bin>

On Thu, 2010-02-18 at 17:45 +0200, Axel Thimm wrote:
> Which modern email client under Linux is working best with dovecot? I
> just did a grep on User-Agent:/X-Mailer: on my dovecot archive (which
> goes back to 2004) and found that the top ten are:
> 
> 28% Thunderbird
> 25% Evolution
>  9% Apple Mail
I wouldn't be surprised if >90% of Evolution and Apple mail mails came
from me. :)
> This is not a my-email-client-is-better-than-your-email-client thread,
> I just want to know which client(s) make proper use of imap features
> for fast searches/copies/deletions etc.
I think they all suck. If I ever have too much time on my hands, I might
try to continue http://trojita.flaska.net/. Its design looks good, but
unfortunately it's nowhere near being actually usable and its
development seems dead.

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 198 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
URL:
<http://dovecot.org/pipermail/dovecot/attachments/20100218/80d9400a/attachment-0002.bin>

Timo Sirainen wrote:
> I think they all suck. If I ever have too much time on my hands, I might
> try to continue http://trojita.flaska.net/. Its design looks good, but
> unfortunately it's nowhere near being actually usable and its
> development seems dead.
>   
See http://projects.flaska.net/projects/activity/trojita - looks like 
there's hope yet!  Last revision posted ... yesterday!

-- 
Daniel

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Hi,

On 2010-02-18 23:50, Timo Sirainen wrote:
> On Thu, 2010-02-18 at 17:45 +0200, Axel Thimm wrote:
>> Which modern email client under Linux is working best with dovecot? I
>> just did a grep on User-Agent:/X-Mailer: on my dovecot archive (which
>> goes back to 2004) and found that the top ten are:
>>
>> 28% Thunderbird
>> 25% Evolution
>>  9% Apple Mail
> 
> I wouldn't be surprised if >90% of Evolution and Apple mail mails
came
> from me. :)
> 
>> This is not a my-email-client-is-better-than-your-email-client thread,
>> I just want to know which client(s) make proper use of imap features
>> for fast searches/copies/deletions etc.
> 
> I think they all suck. If I ever have too much time on my hands, I might
> try to continue http://trojita.flaska.net/. Its design looks good, but
> unfortunately it's nowhere near being actually usable and its
> development seems dead.
That would be a great thing to do :) You could have total control over
the IMAP world by getting out a *good* IMAP client ;) And since it's Qt,
a lot of users (X11, OS X, Windows, soon Nokia smartphones?) could profit.

On the other hand, maybe all efforts should concentrate on Akonadi [1],
which will do IMAP for KDE in the (near?) future... says a KDE user :)

Patrick.

[1] http://pim.kde.org/akonadi/

- -- 
STAR Software (Shanghai) Co., Ltd.            http://www.star-group.net/
Phone:    +86 (21) 3462 7688 x 826             Fax:   +86 (21) 3462 7779

PGP key E883A005 https://stshacom1.star-china.net/keys/patrick_nagel.asc
Fingerprint:           E09A D65E 855F B334 E5C3 5386 EF23 20FC E883 A005
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v2.0.12 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with SUSE - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/

iEYEARECAAYFAkuCLIIACgkQ7yMg/OiDoAUFBACeJ6IbFvKCIxwqX3/Jq9J4V+U2
fIAAoJRi9QuYxHwjOy0XmYcnqf5SO5fh
=8HCp
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

Hello, Axel.
You wrote 18 ??????? 2010 ?., 18:45:21:
> This is not a my-email-client-is-better-than-your-email-client thread,
> I just want to know which client(s) make proper use of imap features
> for fast searches/copies/deletions etc.
 IMHO, all existing clients suck, but not only due to IMAP4 [mis]using, but
because  UI  is  terrible.  For  example, I don't lnow any client with
proper,  accurate  text-only  quoting  (with '> ' marks). Some
clients
forget  to  spilt  long  lines, some don't add '> ' when I split
quote
line  by  hands,  some  don't  remove '> ' automagically when
lines in
quote  are  merged  (by  deleting  CR/NL on previous line), and things
become  even  mnore  horrible  whrn  here are many quotes of different
level. I'm not mention clients, which have top-quoting-only setting or
doesn't  have  templates for  editor  (no, a signature file IS NOT A
TEMPLATE!)

    Threading,  working  with  mailing  lists  (with  all these List-XXX
headers  which  are  standard  now), using diffferent "From" names and
e-mails   for  different  folders  (and,  yes,  different  templates),
differnet templates for different replies, good filters (Thunderbird's
filters  creation  UI is bad, IMHO), flexible but esy-to-setup-default
purging  rules,  etc,  etc,  etc  -- all these features are missing or
implemented  horribly wrong in most clients (I don't claim, that every
client has every feature from this list implemented wrong, but most of
clients has 1/2 or more of this list absent or unusable).

   There is one client which have not-so-bad-UI (I can not use EMACS
 GNU,  but I think everything COULD BE DONE in EMACS, so, may be
 THERE  ARE  TWO clients): Ritlab's "The Bat!". But it works with
IMAP
 terribly  wrong,  works only on Windows, costs money, and is somwhere
 buggy :(

-- 
// Black Lion AKA Lev Serebryakov <lev at serebryakov.spb.ru>

On 2010-02-18 10:50 AM, Timo Sirainen wrote:
> I think they all suck. If I ever have too much time on my hands, I might
> try to continue http://trojita.flaska.net/. Its design looks good, but
> unfortunately it's nowhere near being actually usable and its
> development seems dead.
Hey Timo,

I was wondering if you might take just a few minutes - no need to go
into great detail or anything unless you can do so off the top of your
head and don't mind - and outline what you see as the biggest problems
with all of these sucky IMAP clients, and what things might/could be
done to make them 'suck less'...

Maybe this could be a new entry on your new blog? ;)

I'm interested in opening some bugs for Thunderbird for anything that
seems to be doable/fixable without rewriting everything from scratch
(which obviously isn't going to happen)...

-- 

Best regards,

Charles

On 2/24/10 8:37 PM +0200 Timo Sirainen wrote:
> 1) Online mode: Don't download all message headers at once at startup.
> If I open a mailbox, I'm seeing only about 20 messages on screen.
That's
> all it needs to download. When I scroll the message list, download more
> as needed.
I disagree.

You are conflating UI blocking with network blocking (download), probably
because that's how TB does it.  IMHO, when you open a mailbox, messages
should fill in and be accessible immediately, ie as soon as the headers
are downloaded.  Beyond a screenful, the client should continue to
download headers so that when you do scroll down, there is no delay.
This is especially useful when you are on a slow link.  You spend SO
much time doing nothing, ie reading messages, while the client could
be doing work for you, and then when you scroll you have to wait again?

Also you have to adjust this behavior if server-side sorting is not
available and the user wants something other than message order.

If you're worried about "wasting" bandwidth, a valid concern, the
client
need only prefetch another screenful of messages at a time.

If your client is configured to sync message bodies, it should go ahead
and do that before you start actually reading them, so that you are not
waiting on download.

Apple Mail, for one, seems to implement things as I've described.  Note
I am in now way endorsing Apple Mail as a good IMAP client.

-frank