Re: GNOME plans (--> mail clients)

[Gustav Schaffter <gustav schaffter com>]

Hi,

I'm new to Linux and also to this list. Still, I found your discussion so
interesting that I just *cannot* stop myself from interfearing. :-)

I come from the OS/2 Warp world, slowly converting to Linux RH6.0. At work,
I'm forced to use WNT.

As *many* new users of Linux, I'm looking for a modern, full-featured, GUI
based e-mail client. As many new users, I will use it to access my POP
mail. As many users, I need to have an integration with my pgp application.

>From a real end-users point of view, I may add the following
thoughts/wishes/dreams:

- I would like to have my e-mail (in/out) decrypted/encrypted with either
pgp or gpg. My choise. (Could such a choise be automated for decryption?)

- I would like to have an address book, such as the one in Netscapes e-mail
client. (I actually appreciate to have my friends phone numbers in there. I
normally receive the phone number by e-mail, so it's a very natural place
to save it.)

- I would also like to be able to mark in my address-book, on a per
receiver basis, to what receiver of my e-mail the e-mail app should sign
and/or encrypt my message. (If I sign *all* my outgoing mail, a lot of
people that will never dive into data encryption gets so confused. :)

- I would like to be able to decide, on a per recipient basis, which
pgp/gpg user id should be used for encryption. Example: I send an e-mail to
a friend. I know he's at work, so I send it to his professional e-mail
address. He doesn't have any pgp/gpg user id with his professional id. His
employer wouldn't appreciate it. BTW, who knows how long he will stay
there? Doing it manually, I would encrypt e-mail to this guy with
the id of his *private* e-mail address, but send the message to his
professional e-mail address. If I could set this up in the address-book, it
would be nice.

Finally, as a hint from an end-user. The best (or least bad :-) POP e-mail
client that I've found so far for Linux is the Netscape client. It *does*
have one huge drawback. There is no pgp/gpg interaction. The last point is
why I'm currently fighting with kmail. Sometimes kmail even does what I want
it to. ;-)

Hope I didn't take up too much of your time with my dreams and wishes.

Best regards
Gustav


On Sat, 31 Jul 1999, James Green wrote:
> On Sat, 31 Jul 1999, Augusto Cesar Radtke wrote:
> 
> > On Sun, 19 Sep 1999, Lubos Gelo wrote:
> > 
> > > I feel that email killer-app for Gnome should be:
> > > 
> > > - good looking (design and look is VERY important)
> 
> Yep. In that department, OutLook isn't bad. MS has always been very good
> at UI design imho.
> 
> > > - simple and easy to use
> 
> Yep, complex tasks should of course be available too.
> 
> > > - self-contained (it should not depend on fetchmail, procmail and others)
> 
> No, I disagree. Someone mentioned on gnome-list a few days ago about not
> forgetting the powerful functionality which UNIX cmd-ln utils provide.
> What needs doing is two-fold, something I might write-up soon, but
> basically we need a decent software maintenance tool like RPM but with
> Apt's intelligent "oh, new version is out" functionality, second we should
> use these utils transparently in GNOME apps - the user doesn't need to
> know that sed is used in a text editor or whatever, but you see what I
> mean.
> 
> > > - secure (support for GPG/PGP is simple MUST, support for POP/IMAP over SSL or
> > >   SASL would be nice too)
> 
> smtp?
> 
> > Sometime ago I started a same project, I called it Gizmo, and the
> > principal things that I think about was:
> > 
> > - new mailbox style ; the old huge mbox is big and slow ;
> 
> Agreed.
> 
> > - good design;
> > - simple and fully documented;
> 
> Simplicity rules on the immediate front-end, but let's not forget powerful
> Advanced functionality, possibly through plugins to keep footprint low and
> speed up.
> 
> > - own mail fetcher, support for POP3/IMAP/APOP, others;
> 
> Hmmm. See above comments.
> 
> > - filters;
> > - plug-in system;
> > - mail box compression;
> > - mail box encryption;
> > - address book;
> > - multiple signatures;
> > - multiple mail accounts;
> > - panelize and background mail fetching;
> > - mail backuping and restore (I never saw a client with this feature).
> 
> Yep yep and yep.
> 
> > The several point of a mail client, it his fetching and storage mail
> > scheme, the old mbox storage scheme is bad. Is slow, and very pathetic
> > structured. I have in mind a new scheme, every mail folder is a directory,
> > and every message is a file, the name of file is a hashed string, every
> > mail folder have one index file, when the client open a mailbox it don't
> > open that huge mail file, but the index. The index should contain certain
> > informations, like:
> 
> Agreed. But we have to keep in mind that if something breaks and e-mail is
> needed, the user is going to have to use pine or something which uses
> mbox. Backward compatibility is a must. Maybe a module which, run thorugh
> cron, could backup your mail directory system to the mxob fashion once a
> week to keep backward compatibility?
> 
> 
> -- 
> James Green
> http://www.cyberstorm.demon.co.uk/
> Home of the demon.tech.modems 56k FAQ.
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
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-- 

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