wipmail.txt (3981B)
1 markus schnalke wrote: 2 > [2009-10-06 16:26] pancake <pancake@youterm.com> 3 > 4 >> PD: Actually I have not found a more fast, usable and simplest mail client 5 >> than the one shipped with iphone-os. And no, fetchmail,mutt,claws,telnet 6 >> are not decent solutions. Should we open another thread to create a suckless 7 >> mail client? 8 >> 9 > 10 > What do you mean with ``mail client''? MTA, MUA, MDA, or all of them in one? 11 > 12 A solution that manages MTA, MUA, MDA and MDMA plus LSD in a simple 13 way. 14 15 This is: 16 - Keep a partial local cache of the mails (only last 50?) 17 - imap support server search, so why i have to mirror the folders 18 with 53200 mails? 19 - Only sync selected folders automatically or every N minutes 20 - Attachments should be only retrieved in a second stage (on slow 21 connections 22 is really useful) 23 24 Client must provide a simple tree way to walk on folders (filesystem?) 25 every time a mail is fetched a file is created and it is touched with 26 the specified timestamp. 27 28 I already wrote a patch for msmtp that checks for the MX entry for a 29 domain to 30 automatically specify the remote SMTP server, so no need to configure 31 any smtp 32 server for sending mails. I find this solution much simpler for most 33 situations (unless 34 you are on a restricted network that only allows you to connect to your 35 local smtp) 36 37 So, what I see here is a simple application that manages files in 38 directories and allows to create formatted files (using a template) on 39 some directories using $EDITOR, 40 a command to check files in Outbox to push them to remote servers and commit 41 them into the Sent directory. 42 43 The basic imap operations can be easily mapped as filesystem ones: 44 - list, copy, move, remove 45 46 Just having a simple application to manage pop3/smtp with those minimal 47 operations 48 and writing a simple frontend to edit files on certain directories based 49 on templates. 50 51 Stuff like gpg, html2text (or text2html for those who wants to raise 52 hate on mailing 53 lists), filters to format a mail into a 'reply' format prefixing lines 54 with '>' ... are just 55 pre and post-hooks when calling the $EDITOR or $PAGER. 56 57 The only missing thing I see in this model is the part of attached 58 files. This can be 59 solved by having a directory with the same filename of the mail plus 60 .files and have 61 an application to serialize mail+attachments into a single text stream 62 before sending 63 it to the smtp (maybe using msmtp) can be ideal. 64 65 To setup accounts I can think on a single entrypoint with simple format 66 that configures 67 the rest of applications to work with. 68 69 Multiple accounts should be managed by this approach. Marking emails as 70 read/... 71 can be just a sed script changing a header. 72 73 I have never understood why there is no decent mail implementation like 74 the one 75 explained above. The only problematic to implement such thing is the 76 lack of decent 77 smtp/pop/imap clients. I think that ssl support can be done by local 78 openssl bouncers. 79 80 Another *important* thing is that the SSL stuff must be checked, so in 81 this way you 82 can setup any kind of secure connection without having to reconfigure 83 your mail 84 client. This is: connecting to localhost:110 to bounce the socket to an 85 VPN or an DNSTX 86 network (or TOR, etc...), the client will just know nothing about the 87 underlying network, 88 and the bouncer app will be the one to ensure that the connection is not 89 broken. 90 91 Network *must* be an async dependency for a mail client, so I hate when 92 the client gets 93 locked because of a network cut or slowdown, it is just something that 94 cannot be understood 95 nowadays. 96 97 By having all this simple setup done (in a single package, please, i 98 dont want to configure 99 3 or 4 programs to get my email working) i can imagine a lot of 100 automatizations in scripts 101 to autoreply emails, filter spam, etc.. And the GUI is actually a 102 filesystem. 103 104 Email syncing is not only a thing of pop3/imap, we can also think on 105 using ssh or fuse to 106 access/sync to our remote mailboxes or maildirs. 107 108 --pancake 109 110