[2534] in Release_7.7_team
IMAP text client
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Greg Hudson)
Fri Jan 12 10:43:23 2001
Date: Fri, 12 Jan 2001 10:38:17 -0500
Message-Id: <200101121538.KAA13061@egyptian-gods.MIT.EDU>
From: Greg Hudson <ghudson@MIT.EDU>
To: release-team@MIT.EDU
Hi. I'd like to think seriously about an IMAP text mail client for
the next release. Options I see are:
1. Pine - considered probably the most user-friendly client,
although it occasionally imposes extra steps for common
tasks. Has a somewhat unfriendly license (no commercial
sale, can distribute patches but no modified versions
except for local use). Maintained by the University of
Washington. Not moribund; the last release was in
December.
You can try it out with "pine-imap" from the sipb locker.
2. Mutt - more flexible than pine. Reasonaby user-friendly,
although I found some foibles in the user interface which
will probably translate into a steeper learning curve than
pine. Licensed under the GPL. Maintained by a collection
of individuals who have a domain and some infrastructure
(like apache or NetBSD or whatever) at mutt.org. Also not
apparently moribund.
You can try it out with "mutt-unstable -f '{$USER@poN}'"
where poN is your mail server. (We'd need to hack in
Hesiod support, it appears.) mutt-unstable is in the
outland locker.
3. Nothing. Since we're unlikely to have an X IMAP client for
the upcoming release, don't bother having a text client.
mutt and pine can both read and write MH mailboxes, I think. mutt
certainly can, at least.
As far as support status, I think the client would be considered "a
non-default option" (we wouldn't point anything in the release at it,
and wouldn't recommend it except when circumstances pointed to it)
until we switch from xmh to (presumably) evolution.
My preference at the moment is for (2). A text client may not get as
much attention from testers as an X client, so an extra year of
semi-experimental use is probably a good thing.
