walkah: the quest for a perfect mail client
the quest for a perfect mail client
as anyone who uses email a lot can relate, it's hard to find a really good mail client. maybe i'm too picky, or too quirky, or too something. but i just can't seem to find a mail client that really suits all of my needs. i posted a while back about the things I like about thunderbird, and it's still mostly true. but, i'm still not quite happy - in fact, i've gone back to using Mail.app on my powerbook. Why? well here are the top couple things that have been driving me crazy with thunderbird:
- no search or filter on flagged messages. i can't believe that this hasn't been addressed! actually the one mail client that seems to have this right is evolution, which lets you save a search for flagged messages. maybe my workflow is wrong. but i use IMAP mail exclusively and when I get new messages that require action, I flag them.
- on that note, am i crazy since i can't find a keybinding in thunderbird to flag a message? i mean even mail.app has that.
- no on the fly spell checking. it's a minor nit, but it does get old. when sending work emails, i like to avoid nasty spelling mistakes, but having to run through each misspelled word (especially when my email routinely refers to "bryght" or "drupal") can be a pain. my eyes are pretty good at ignoring red squiggles that don't apply.
So, for now, i've switched to Mail.app on my powerbook as my primary mail app. I know, it doesn't satisfy the flagged message thing - although i saw a preview image of tiger's mail.app : which promises to have "smart folders" for things like flagged messages. that would be awesome. plus, mail.app comes with the nice features of - a) showing address book images with messages (the power of images - behold!) - for that matter, address book integration in general. the linux world should take note of simple, specialized applications that then work well with each other. b) the unread message count in the dock is great.
but, mail.app isn't perfect. it will start to bug me again soon, i'm sure. so what do other people use for mail?
James Walker
Well, of course...
... the One True MUA, mutt!
You can install it right now with "apt-get install mutt" or "port install mutt", depending on your prefered poison. And if you combine it with offlineimap, you have the perfect travelling mail set up.
Seriously, GUI email clients are nice for some, very limited, cases, but for power and efficiency, you really can't beat mutt.
ah... once upon a time
i was a serious mutt user. you can checkout my muttrc in my cvs repository. and, yes, i love mutt. i spent a *lot* of hours getting mutt to work just the way i like. i've even used offlineimap (which at the time was beta enough to actually munge an entire imap folder on me :( ).
however, mutt has some downfalls. addressbook integration - while possible - is non trivial. attachment handling can be a real pain in the butt. plus, ever tried writing multiple messages concurrently in a CLI MUA? it's double-plus unfun.
although, i must admit, this hint over at macosxhints made me think of giving mutt on OSX a whirl.
I can't really slag mutt... i just wish GUI options were as powerful.
multiple messages == multiple term windows :)
Yeah, it's not exactly optimum... but I routinely have multiple mutt terminal windows open (one for my inbox, one to move around mailing list folders), and there's no reason you can't open new ones to write multiple messages at once. But maybe you should organise your thought processes better :). Yes, that was mostly tongue-in-cheek...
Thanks for the address book hint, by the way, I'll have to try it out.
organize my thoughts??
hah. fat chance ;)
some thunderbird tips
- you may set labels using the keys 1-5. thats all. real simple. you may customize labels if you wish
- the dropdown menu called 'View' lets you filter by Label. In .9, you can compose your own arbitrary search criteria and then save it as a Search Folder. Those appear in the same View dropdown.
- i agree that lack of address book integration and on the fly spellcheck are annoying. they'll get there. it so cool how IMAP mail lets you experiment with mail clients without penalty.
i should have mentioned...
yes, I'm aware of tbird's labels. the problem is - labels are only stored locally (afaict, anyway). the problem is then, if i label something on my powerbook, when i'm reading mail on my desktop machine there is no record of the label. that's why i've gotten into the habit of using "flags" since that is IMAP reckognizable.
i haven't given up completely on thunderbird - ultimately i hope it will mature into my client of choice - the cross-platform aspect gives it a huge head start (even if Mail.app were ideal - i don't forsee the day when I'll be running Mail.app on linux).
portable
my labels persist when I use work vs. home PC. the key is to have a mail server which supports IMAP keywords. See http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.mozilla.general.french/231
hrm mine don't.
and i don't speak french. is there an IMAP server other than courier that might be more accomodating?
Has a bug been filed on this yet?
FINALLY! I think you're the first person I've found who even acknowledges this is a problem.
Do you know if a bug has been filed on this yet? I'm having a hard time searching bugzilla because "flag" is such a generic word.
I use Evolution on Linux but I do have to use Windows for a few things, and I've recently started using Thunderbird on Windows. However, this lack of support for flagged messages is very frustrating for me. Ideally, I would love to be able to run Evolution on windows, but CyGNOME just isn't there yet. So... Thuderbird is not bad by any means, but this one bug is nearly a showstopper for me.
Do you know of any status on fixing this?
no
i have not found a work around for the flag thing.
however, i have gone to using thunderbird's flag system. it is easy to tag things (just hit "4" on a message to mark it as "TODO"). then you can easily get a list of what is done.
and, according to moshe's research, with a recent enough version of courier imap, these labels will be stored server side (but i've not tested this extensively - yet).
FLAG searches
I'm with everyone on the FLAG handling, it is really frustrating! Has anyone found a way to search by flag status? I know you can sort a folder by flag status, but what I want is a search folder for flagged messages, really useful!
Anyone found anything useful?
i wish
i have not. i would still like to see this, since i am not always using thunderbird and while not very many IMAP clients support imap keywords, they all seem to support flags.
Flag bug (appears to be resolved too)
The search by flag bug is: ttps://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=272709.
do you know if there are any plans to put multiple colour flags
do you know if there are any plans to put multiple colour flags in mozilla?
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