[2944] in Release_7.7_team
Requirements for GUI mail client
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Greg Hudson)
Sat Sep 15 17:39:20 2001
Date: Sat, 15 Sep 2001 17:39:01 -0400
Message-Id: <200109152139.RAA02055@egyptian-gods.MIT.EDU>
From: Greg Hudson <ghudson@MIT.EDU>
To: release-team@mit.edu
Here is what I've been using as a requirements list for a GUI mail
client. It must:
1. Be able to use an IMAP server as the primary and only mail store.
2. Be able to use an MH mail store as a secondary mail store, if it
exists.
3. Be able to send MIME attachments easily.
4. Be able to do krb4 IMAP.
It should:
5. Be able to do krb5 IMAP.
6. Be able to display HTML email natively.
7. Look and behave consistently with GNOME.
8. Not depend on a lot of libraries we don't already have in the
release.
9. Not have a bunch of additional functionality besides mail
(although some of these functions might be nice for user, they
would also increase our maintenance and support burden).
If a mail client doesn't meet a requirement, we might be able to hack
it to do so. Differences in usability and maintainability of the code
base may override how close the client comes to meeting the
requirements.
So far I've been looking at evolution, balsa, and mahogany. Here's
what I believe about them so far (I'll throw in what little I know of
KMail):
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Evolution n y y y n y y y n
Balsa ? y y y y y y y y
Mahogany ? y y n n y y ? y
KMail ? ? ? ? ? y n n y
To expand on that matrix:
* aui [856] suggests that Evolution's mh support is limited, but not
completely missing. So the "y" in E2 is questionable.
* B4 and B5 are "y" on the basis that Balsa appears to use IMAP
support borrowed from mutt, and libmutt can use Cyrus SASL.
Right now Balsa looks pretty good, and I think it is also more mature
than the other choices except for KMail. Balsa does present some
technical challenges not presented by Evolution (basically, Cyrus SASL
really wants shared krb5 libraries, and we don't have those yet,
though we'd like them), but I will be looking at it closely as my next
step.
