[NTLUG:Discuss] Mail Clent Recommendations

[Richard Cobbe]

MadHat wrote on 1-14-2000:

> al_h at technologist.com wrote:
> > 
> > I currently use NS Messenger for 99.999% of my email, I have played with
> > Kmail, which doesnt offer any advantages over NS Msgr.
> > Does anyone have a mail client that they feel improves upon my current
> > choice? I am interested in end user experiences, please tell me about
> > what you - - use.
> > 
> > Why?
> > 
> > What will I gain/loose from NS Messenger?
> 
> The problem I find is that most people want a GUI that does everything
> Netscape does, but don't want to use Netscape.  I like mutt (and is what
> I use for my business mail), but if you are using POP mail, it doesn't
> allow for filtering directly, you have to use fetchmail and procmail to
> do filtering, AFAIK.  I might be wrong.
> 
> I want to see Eudora for Linux.
> 
> I still use Netscape for my personal mail because I haven't found
> anything "clean" (or finished/polished) enough to do everything I want
> (filtering, threading, decent spell checking, easy to set up and change,
> good address book, mailbox compression, etc...).  I still don't know of
> a good client that has the ability to check multiple POP accounts anlong
> with all the above.

For those of you out there who aren't too turned off by emacs, I'd
recommend VM.

* Threading.

* spell checking: use ispell, built into emacs.

* easy to set up and change: if you're used to messing around in .emacs,
  yeah.

* MIME support, both sending and receiving

* Probably the neatest feature for me, the ability to edit messages that
  you've received.  Some random person hasn't quite caught on to the idea
  of 80-column lines?  No problem!  Edit the message, use the standard
  Emacs commands to rejustify the text, then save.  Done!  Really long list
  of addressees?  Edit the message and delete them all!

* And, of course, since it's an emacs mode, you can use all of the standard
  Emacs keybindings.

* POP/IMAP: you can set it up to get mail from multiple POP and IMAP
  servers.  (This is something that Netscape can't quite handle, I think.)
  I use fetchmail here, though.

* Understands many of the common UNIX mailer folder formats.  Handy when
  you're switching over from one mailer to another.

Things you'll miss from Communicator:

* Mailbox compression: not an issue with VM.  (Netscape is actually
  compressing its summary files by removing old blank entries, rather than
  actually zipping the folders.  VM doesn't use summary files, so there's
  nothing to compress.)

* Filtering: can't find this in VM, no.  But then, I use
  fetchmail/procmail.

* Address book.  I think you can get the same functionality, but it's a bit
  of a headache.  You can set VM up, with the included software, to use
  .mailcap; it'll expand nicknames to names in headers and so forth.  For
  addresses and phone numbers and so forth, you might want to check out
  BBDB, from Jamie Zawinski -- http://www.jwz.org/bbdb/.

* I haven't found a convenient way to save draft messages so I can come
  back, finish them up, and send them later.  It may well be available,
  however, and you can always save the message to a normal text file and
  load it into a composition buffer later.

* The ability to deal with HTML-formatted messages.

Why do I use VM?  Two major reasons: emacs keybindings and the ability to
edit received messages.  Emacs has been my primary editor for N years now,
and I don't like being surprised by other applications which *approximate*
the emacs keybindings, but redefine certain keys that I use frequently.
For example, Pine binds ^K to delete-entire-line, rather than
delete-to-end-of-line.  The really annoying one, though, is Netscape.  I'm
used to alt-Q being rejustify-current-paragraph -- under Netscape, this
quits!

VM is, as advertized, largely for emacs-lovers.  If you'd rather die than
touch emacs, then this is probably not for you.

If you're interested, check out http://www.wonderworks.com/vm/, or I've
built an RPM that I could send to interested people.

Richard