Is there a
- portable &
- opensource
email client (apart from Thunderbird ...)?
I am searching desperately for
- a rather simple email app (sophistication level: Outlook Express)
- that I could adapt for my purposes, develop it further for future use etc.
- Something like Koma-Mail (which unfortunately isn't opensource) ...
... but until now without success.
Does anyone have a hot tip?
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Sylpheed / Claws is a good place to start. There have been some dev tests here not too long ago and Sylpheed at least can be set up natively portable.
http://sylpheed.sraoss.jp/doc/faq/en/sylpheed-faq-2.html
Wm
Thank you, Wm ...
I tested already both of them some time ago, but: No (or extremely poor) html support ...
Perhaps it would be easier if you say what your top down problems with TB are (say 5 issues max)
Wm
No, unfortunately it wouldn't be easier, because my question is not intended to compare whatever to TB at all, and because the field of opensource email clients is extremely small obviously.
But to add another compared-to-TB description to the list in my question (my examples Outlook Express and Koma-Mail are already such a comparison): Koma-Mail is a beautifully slim email client with only 2.6 MB DL size; the DL size of TB is 28 MB ...
Slimness is like flexibility, you either have it or you don't.
Thank you, Wm..., but I'm afraid nobody will be able to help ...
A route that you may not have explored is newsreaders. I've no idea how long your internet history is and there is no need for you to say but a number of newsreader programs have more sophisticated mail handling than a naive overview might suggest.
Wm
No such thing found ... A more precise hint?
Not sure what you searched for, try NNTP newsreader or NNTP client. Some, like Outlook Express, Thunderbird, and Seamonkey, also supported mail besides NNTP news. I might have suggested Xananews but I recently read that mail support was dropped. Good luck
... with the result:
No such mail client, and no such newsreader which would be usable as mail client (and portable, and openource, and supporting HTML ... see details of my initial question.
if koma mail does what you want why not just use it? it seems to me you've answered your own question and are now just putting up barriers
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_email_clients
is your new friend
Wm
Well, excuse me, Wm...
"... and are now just putting up barriers"
Am I?
In the 3th line of my initial post you can read the 5th word of my initial post: opensource.
But forget it. I see this discussion has no sense.
quite
Wm
at some point I was having Dream Mail, which was possible not 100%portable in PortableApps sense, but was running otherwise independent.
The problem with mail clients is, they have to be maintained actively, since there are many changes to mail today. Some years ago, we had our POP3 and SMTP on basic ports, but now we need full implementation of IMAP and all sorts of encryption needed.
People want full html handling and all sorts of MIME supports. Often this can be only done by hooking the mail client to the system completely.
Therefore simple mail clients which we have been used to some 10 years ago are of little use today.
You can try Sylpheed for example, how portable the current version is, I have no idea.
Otto Sykora
Basel, Switzerland
Thank you, Otto Sykora, for your welcome factual analysis!
It explains to some extent why there are so few mail clients with these criteria.
My approach and intention is to found the slimest portable opensource app for each area (email, browser, desktop search ...) providing all basic features and enabling me to implement some adaptations in case of emerging new needs (provided that my programming skills are good enough).
(The html support of Sylpheed unfortunately is very poor ...)
I would actually look for an e--mail client with minimal HTML support but the ability to call the default browser (almost all will do this).
Two important reasons in your scenario
1) you are leaving HTML work to the specialist tool, most e-mail clients do a second rate job of more complex HTML
2) your e-mail client will by definition be smaller and be able to concentrate on its own specialisation, handling mail
Make sense ?
Wm
it is the support of all sorts of MIME , incl html handling, that makes the clients so fat in present days.
They need to have all sorts of own subsystems build in to be able to display this and that. Some people want that mail client will also play music, so the author can build this in sure. But such things make it grow infinitely.
Handling html can be extremely complex, as today it can contain almost any kind of data.
So either it is 'poor', then it will just handle some text formating, however html5 will also handle videos. So if someone needs that in a mail client, this becomes then as big as html5 compatible browser.
Otto Sykora
Basel, Switzerland
3 cheers for Seamonkey 47MB installed and it does it all
Wm