Re: Balse feature in Brave GNU World?

[Steffen Klemer <masterofheap gmx net>]

Am 2004.04.02 14:50 schrieb(en) Georg C. F. Greve:
  > Hi,
  >
  > I was wondering whether you might be interested in a Balsa feature in
  > the Brave GNU World [1] to inform people about an alternative to
  > Evolution, which many people seem to know by now.
  >

Perhaps I'll try to answer as much as possible that others have a start to  
complete it ;)

  > Brave GNU World standard questions:
  > -----------------------------------
  >
  > INTRODUCTION:
  >
  >  These are the standard questions for the Brave GNU World column that
  >  can be found online at http://brave-gnu-world.org.
  >
  >  It has become customary to fill out these questions and mail them
  >  back to <column@gnu.org> in order to give me a good
  >  feeling/impression about a project. This also applies to
  >  non-technical projects, btw.
  >
  >  Please feel free to be as verbose as you want as more information
  >  will allow me to gain a more complete picture which I can then use to
  >  write a more complete feature.
  >
  >
  > QUESTIONS:
  >
  >  * What is it?

Balsa is an e-mail reader.  This client is part of the GNOME
desktop environment.  It supports nearly every known type of local  
mailboxes, POP3 and IMAP. Balsa depends on many gnome-libs such as gtkhtml  
for html-mails or libgnomeprint for printing.

  >  * Who would use it?

Everybody using X and internet mail should install it :)


  >  * Why would they use it instead of similar projects?

Balsa incorporates nearly all features a mua should offer. Additionally  
it's not that crowded like evolution. You don't have to load a whole pim  
or browser-evironment only to write some mails. Also it comes with gtk2  
and in a not to distant future with the new fileselector-widget.

  >  * (Programming) language used in this project?

c

  >  * Special features/strengths?

* flexible mail-filter support
* supports every known local mailbox-type
* pgp, open-pgp and (in a near future) smime-support for reading and  
writing mails
* ldap-support
* very configurable - you can even set things like "prefer text over html- 
display" or the quoting-colors as well as the toolbar-buttons
* every single preference can be found in the gui!!!
* spell check
* more standarts compliant then any other mua
* multiple identities per account

  >  * Special problems?

* sometimes a little bit to complicate for new users
* still no gconf-support
* new backend not really finished yet

  >  * Who is working on it?

At the moment Pawel Salek, Carlos Morgado, Peter Bloomfield, Emmanuel  
Allaud and Albrecht Dreß

  >  * History of the project?

The Balsa project was started by Stuart Parmenter back in 1997. Around  
version 0.7 Pawel Salek took over maintainership. Version 1.0 was released  
in the beginning of 2001. It had many cool features like the long awaited  
identities (writte by Matthew Guenther) or working html-support.

1.2 incorporated libesmtp from Brian Stafford for a rock-solid smtp- 
connection.
1.4 brought the gpg-support coded by Albrecht Dreß
The 1.x series reached 1.4.4 which is still used by some people today.
Balsa 2.0 marked the port to gtk2 but had many other new features.

Balsa 2.2 will have a completly rewritten mail-backend based on gmime,  
better imap-support, s/mime and a gtk2.4-fileselector :)

  >  * Why did the project start?

Everybody wanted a gnome-mailclient


  >  * Current status of the project?

stable and for every-day use


  >  * Plans for the close and distant future?

Release of 2.2 stable

  >  * Do you need help? If so: of what kind?

dunno??

Help is always appreciated. Especially the documentation and the website  
need some work.


  >  * Interesting/fun stories that might juice up the story?
  >
  >  * Website/FTP addresses?

http://balsa.gnome.org and the mailing list linked there


  >  * License?!

GPL

  >  * Standard documents to read in this context?

all this nice rfc about mime, pop, imap, gpg...

  >  * Anything you would like to see mentioned?
  >
  >  * Answer to a question I forgot?

I hope this draft is at least of a little bit help for sb. to complete  
it...

cu
/Steffen

-- 
 /"\
 \ /  ASCII Ribbon Campaign    |  "The best way to predict
  X  * NO HTML/RTF in e-mail   | the future is to invent it."
 / \ * NO MSWord docs in e-mail|                -- Alan Kay