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Comment by solarkraft | Hacker News Reader

I emphatically agree that E-Mail clients suck, to the point of wondering whether I should build an E-Mail client (my answer is "probably not").

Instead I did the second best thing and came up with some user styles to make one of the better hosted E-Mail clients, IO.OX (B2B software used by mailbox.org and Strato), a bit more bearable and almost even comfortable: https://gist.github.com/solarkraft/6afcfff8d5283cefad40695c9...

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I wrote a console-based modal email-client, which was written in 50% C++ and 50% Lua for the user-interface and all scripting.

My advice to anybody considering writing an email client would be .. don't. The amount of broken MIME things you'll have to deal with, strong opinions on UI, and similar things will make you go crazy.

I used to use mutt, then my own client. These days there are a few console-based clients that are new such as aerc, but even so writing the basics is easy, but coping with real mail is way harder than you'd expect

> The amount of broken MIME things you'll have to deal with, strong opinions on UI, and similar things will make you go crazy.

Would it make more sense to first build a bunch of libs, to create a common ground, onto which people could more easily build their customized clients?

Python's email libraries are pretty complete.

Email clients are absolutely terrible. If the best we can do is Thunderbird, a slow-moving almost abandonware monolith (have a look at its extension store. It's a ghost town), the situation is dire.

Webmail is good enough, but PWA implementation across operating systems is terrible as well. I keep Fastmail pinned in a browser tab, and let's hope I don't close the browser.

I hear CLI email clients are great, but the latest startup newsletter didn't get the memo and I keep receiving HTML emails with images, and I don't want to live in the terminal either.

Thunderbird isn’t almost abandonware.

It literally was abandonware for several years.

It was only recently resurrected by 1-2 devs a few years ago and they’ve had to rebuild the community, funding and contributor support.

The fact that Thunderbird worked perfectly well even while being abandonware is a testament to Thunderbird and email.

I think the last part they really need to get completed is separation from the Firefox code. We’re already seeing accelerating delivery of features which should hopefully improve.

I've used Thunderbird for probably like 15 years now and this is the first time I'm hearing that it ever was abandonware. At no point during that time did I not like it much better than all alternatives. Pretty impressive given that it apparently wasn't being developed for several years.

You might have noticed that there was a period during which none of your extensions or add-ons stopped functioning? That was the abandonware period.

Now that it's ended once again some of my extensions have stopped functioning.

Good to see that the new developers are continuing Mozilla's legacy.

I do have to agree tho. They force-upgraded from Enigmail to the built-in PGP support which ended up broken for me. Since no one uses PGP mail I haven't bothered looking for a fix...

Does the Thunderbird calendar work as good as outlook for you? Does calendar invites and other communication programs have good integration with Thunderbird?

At my last gig I used a paid extension called owl to sync with outlook, even though the company did not support anything other than MS Outlook or the Office 365 web interface. It was not expensive and worked terrifyingly, even syncing the company calendar and address books.

I honestly can't be sure if terrifyingly was a typo here. Perhaps for terrifically..

I swear this Note 10 changes words that are a few words back. I've had similar "corrections" ever since I changed to this device. It's too late to edit now.

I'm going to experiment recording the screen while I type to confirm or deny this.

I always hear this brought up but how essential to emailing is calendaring? Is exchange support built in to mutt or pine?

Calendaring is very much important. How will I schedule meetings? Meetings, appointments are the most important things in business these days.

> How will I schedule meetings?

I suggest using a calendar.

What about sending meeting invites via email?

> If the best we can do is Thunderbird

What about KMail/Kontact? Evolution? Sylpheed Claws? The Client of the Vivaldi(?) Browser? Not to forgotten all the commercial clients. Are they all dead or trash?

> a slow-moving almost abandonware monolith (have a look at its extension store. It's a ghost town)

To be fair, Thunderbird has a complicated history. The unloved child of Mozilla, survived far too long on it's own, until it got love again, at the time when the parent moved away from XUL, giving the future of Thunderbird-extensions a timelimit. That it's still surviving on high levels is more of a miracle.

I wouldn’t say it is because it is a miracle, but because it still focuses on being an e-mail client. In Ubuntu kmail requires a database server and groupware.

If you accidentally close that Fastmail tab, just open another one. You will lose nothing.

You can be logged into Fastmail from several devices simultaneously. And I often have several Fastmail tabs open at one time. No problem at all.

The only thing better than Fastmail webmail is the Fastmail app for iOS.

(al)pine is pretty good.

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