RE: Recommendations for Email client?
> > I can't believe no one else has recommended netscape. netscape 4 does support IMAP and
> > in fact I think it's a pretty sweet mail client. (No, I'm not a unix newbie. I've been
> > writing unix software for over five years and used various character-mode mail
> > clients.) These days I have to write NT software but with netscape I can just copy all
> > my folders and address book from machine to laptop and in fact use *the same files* on
> > my laptop whether I'm booted in Windoze or Linux. Now that is cool in my opinion.
> > True, netscape is not as configurable as mutt, but sometimes I like to send mail with
> > actual formatting like bold, italic, etc. Anyway, there you have it. Now all Linux
> > netscape needs is drag-and-drop...
>
> And a way to stop crashing every so often. AT least it cleans up after
> itself..
Actually, Netscape is close to perfect for my application. However:
1. *EVERY SINGLE TIME* I open a folder with more than 100 or so new messages
(since the last time Netscape scanned it), it will get about halfway through
and then go into a CPU-eating loop forever.
2. I can't change the port number that it uses for IMAP, and I use SSH
port redirection, so I have to run SSH as root and redirect port 143 on
my local machine.
3. No PGP (I can live without it).
FWIW, I'm using Netscape under Debian now, and 4.5 is much more stable than
any previous version of Netscape I've ever used. Even when it goes into CPU-death
mode, I can abort the current operation and restart it, and I don't recall 4.5
*ever* segfaulting on me.
Oh, also, I tried mutt. Its IMAP support leaves a lot to be desired:
1. It is a severe PITA to change folders on the same IMAP server.
2. In order to access a folder on an IMAP server with a space in its
name, you have to restart mutt from the command line, since there is no
way to enter a space when changing folders.
3. It doesn't cache the headers locally, so every time you open a folder,
it needs to re-download ALL of the headers (this can take some time with
12,000+ messages in some folders).
4. When you close a folder, it insists on "storing message flags" for each
and every message. Can you say "several hours?" I never did let it finish
with my Debian Users folder, which "only" has 9000 messages in it.
I'll try xfmail when I get home, since I can't run it via telnet, but it looks
butt-ugly and klunky. I'm leaning more and more towards just using PINE. It
was designed with IMAP in mind, after all...
-Jon Burchmore
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