tired of bulky mail clients?

mp303 · Post by **mp303** » Thu Jul 03, 2003 5:30 pm

Am I the only one who's getting fed up with bulky email clients? I'm thinking especially of Netscape and Outlook here ... even on my 2.5GHz P4 w/256MB they manage to slow down the entire system.

Outlook: slow as hell, steals about 20 MB of memory just for loading it up - famed for it's vulnerability to email viruses.

Netscape: worse in every respect - even slow, steals 22 MB of memory at startup, takes almost a full 15-20 seconds just to LOAD, and is generally slow as hell...

Also, both of them tend to get slower and slower as your email archive grows, and the search functions are painfully slow in both programs as well, even with just a few hundred mails in your archive.

Okay then. I'm done complaining :)

Here's what I propose to do about it: write a mail client in PB ... some important points would be:

- Use of SQLite for mail storage - it's extremely fast, and could provide fast email searches... and the binary adds only about 200 KB to your distribution. Received attachments would be archived in a folder somewhere, to keep the database smaller and faster.

- No support for HTML mail! ... What's the point? Most people I know HATE getting HTML mails - I mean, they're usually tasteless and ugly, and the (Microsoft) HTML parser makes the mail client vulnerable to virus attacks. Of course there should be support for READING HTML mails in the client, since you can't avoid a few morons using it, but the composer would reply exclusively in plain text, and the reader would strip the HTML down to plain text before displaying it by default, with an option to read it in a browser window.

- Keeping the binary, and memory usage, to an absolute minimum. I'm sure you Amiga users remember the days when 20 MB was the size of your ENTIRE HARDDRIVE - we had mail clients back then, and they didn't use all your RAM or fill up your harddrive. What does today's mailers actually DO that's so fantastic and justifies using a thousand times more RAM? ... HTML mail is just about the only feature that comes to my mind, and in my opinion, that was a mistake in the first place. Microsoft and Netscape will tell you it "enables you to send creative email" or some jibberish - what it really does is slow things down, clutter the communication, waste your bandwidth, make you vulnerable to virus attacks, and generally ruin your mood because it's generally so incredibly ugly to look at ;)

- Open source and extensible: make the source code freely available, and make it easy to add functionality to the program.

...

Just take one, long, hard look at your mailer, and ask yourself what you really need all this garbage for? ... Strip it down to what you NEED: reading and sending mail, sorting mail info folders (with filters), an address book, support for sending and receiving binary attachments, support for multiple mail servers, and an import feature so you can migrate from Outlook or Netscape. That's about it. Everything else is just deadweight, if you ask me ;)

What I'm after, is a program that makes email communication SIMPLE, FAST and EFFECTIVE - again :)

...

So what do you think? Have I finally lost it? Or am I on to something?

tinman · Post by **tinman** » Thu Jul 03, 2003 5:45 pm

Why not just use another mail client? There are others out there ;)

aszid · Post by **aszid** » Thu Jul 03, 2003 6:02 pm

well... i have no problems on my home pc with OE... but it does drag a bit on my work computer (PII-somethin 128mb ram)... i don't think it's a bad idea for a project, but i suggest starting on the project... then asking for support to work on it... (if indeed this is what this poll was for)\

Kale · Post by **Kale** » Thu Jul 03, 2003 6:14 pm

- No support for HTML mail!

Hallejula brother!

I think it would be a good idea i would use such a client. I used to use the old Microsoft Internet Mail & News v1.0 and i loved it, pity it doesn't work on XP. I would also recommend that any client you start has support for multiple mail accounts.

Go for it!

ricardo · Post by **ricardo** » Thu Jul 03, 2003 6:16 pm

But the problem is not because sending html e mails.
You can code an email client capacble to send and receive html e mailsthat dosent eat all memory and dont run so slow.

Im agree that most (Outlook) is like hell.

helpy · Post by **helpy** » Thu Jul 03, 2003 6:17 pm

Did somebody tried Pegasus Mail (www.pmail.com)

mp303 · Post by **mp303** » Thu Jul 03, 2003 6:25 pm

tinman,

of course I already did that :) ... among others, I've been using FoxMail for a while - but it had some nasty bugs, and after almost a full year with not a single update/bugfix release, I had to get rid of it ... my mistake was going back to Netscape, which, I have to say, is by far the worst mailer EVER in this end of the galaxy - on occassion, it actually BLANKS a mail, for no apparent reason, and you can never read it again ...

but what other mailer would you recommend? ... I'd be happy to check out another one. If in deed there IS one good mailer out there, writing my own would of course be a waste of time - this idea arises out of pure necessity, it's not because I feel like writing my own mailer. But sometimes, if you want things done right, you gotta do it yourself ;)

tinman · Post by **tinman** » Thu Jul 03, 2003 7:10 pm

mp303 wrote:going back to Netscape, which, I have to say, is by far the worst mailer EVER in this end of the galaxy - on occassion, it actually BLANKS a mail, for no apparent reason, and you can never read it again ...

Mmm, nice.

but what other mailer would you recommend? ... I'd be happy to check out another one. If in deed there IS one good mailer out there, writing my own would of course be a waste of time - this idea arises out of

I'd recommend Pegasus (freeware, but not open source), as mentioned by helpy. I've been using it for a long time now and the current version is rather good. It supports HTML mail, but you can turn it off ;)

Some people can't stand it, but give it a go, you might like it.

I've also heard people rant on about "The BAT" (http://www.ritlabs.com/the_bat/, shareware?) but never personally used it. Of course, there is also the OE clone but with built in adverts Eudora. Never liked it much.

pure necessity, it's not because I feel like writing my own mailer. But sometimes, if you want things done right, you gotta do it yourself ;)

Sure. But if it's something you're interested in then it's always worthwhile, dare I say enjoyable :) There was a poll here by Num3 some time back about writing a YAM (http://www.yam.ch) clone for Windows in PureBasic, maybe that got started.

mp303 · Post by **mp303** » Thu Jul 03, 2003 7:57 pm

I did try Pegasus some years back, but it sucked ... I just downloaded it again though, and gave it another shot - it does look pretty good.

Although I was disappointed to find in my task manager that it uses 11 MB of RAM, when the web site claims it'll use only 4 MB - maybe this is different under WinXP for some reason... Also, the whole user interface strikes me as being extremely messy and unprofessional - it really does look like something from 1990... And, it's way, way too elaborate - it has a trillion features of which I need probably about five ;)

But who cares - it's free, and it's definitely a step up from Netscape, so I guess I'll try it for a while, before I start writing my own... thanks for the recommendation :)

TronDoc · Post by **TronDoc** » Thu Jul 03, 2003 8:01 pm

I like Popcorn email program by UltraFunk.
http://www.ultrafunk.com/products/popcorn/
It even lets you look at the server and
delete spam without downloading it.
It is a very tiny program. ~200K
Joe

edit:
{I am not saying it would not be nice to
have a similar program with .pb source!
I voted "possibly"}

Post by **Fred** » Thu Jul 03, 2003 8:02 pm

I still use YAM on WinUAE for my mails, as I didn't found any clients which was ok for me. I started one in PB but never finished it (Guess why...

).

fsw · Post by **fsw** » Thu Jul 03, 2003 8:16 pm

Fred wrote:I still use YAM on WinUAE for my mails, as I didn't found any clients which was ok for me. I started one in PB but never finished it (Guess why... ).

WHY

fsw · Post by **fsw** » Thu Jul 03, 2003 8:51 pm

I hate bloatware to

Trondoc mentioned Popcorn - this is a really cool tool, doesn't has HTML capabilities (why people need it is another question... - I don't need it ) and you can delete spam as he said without downloading them to your computer

I have to use Outlook @ work because of the calendar functionality....

At home I used a lot of years Kaufman Mail Warrior (fits on a floppy and freeware):

http://pages.infinit.net/kaufman/Index.htm

Found only 3 bugs in it, and one is only cosmetic:
If you minimize the address book and restore it again it has a different Window size (window is longer). Also if you have tons of addresses in it it gets slow...

The second bug can be annoying:
If you have tons of email stored, let's say 250 or more (on one account), than at one point the Program will start but close again (you can't use it anymore). You have to start from scratch again with a clean directory - and all mails are lost (well still in the old database).

So if you always keep your mailboxes small, you will never experience this bug.

The third bug is related to HTML mails - sometimes he displays it wrong and can't wrap the text. But you can say FORWARD the mail and look at the forwarded text, read it and cancel the forwarding action.

Now I try to use Thunderbird, but this fella is in his early stages and clumsy (still too much Mozilla code in it)
Also I miss a function to check all email accounts with one click (Mail Warrior has that) so I have to check every mail account at a time - that's annoying.

Or I go back to the Mail Warrior - my wife loves it because it's easy to work with, and except for the address book (if you have thausends of addresses) it's really fast. I can live with the 3 bugs mentioned above...

Bad though is that the last version was build 2001.

On the other hand a PureBasic email client with the functionallity of Popcorn and Mail Warrior combined would ROCK

Maybe as a community efford

mp303 · Post by **mp303** » Thu Jul 03, 2003 9:48 pm

tinman,

I'm now using Pegasus since a couple of hours, and it's already driving me mad ... having to dig into the oversize menus to find every little option, like the filters, is nerve shattering :/ ... and I just spent half an hour piling through the help files to find a way to import my (.csv) address books which I took out of Netscape - the help files do mention an import feature, but where the heck is it? The help files say to open the address book manager - okay - and an "address book" menu is supposed to appear rightmost in the application's menu ... but it doesn't. There's an "addresses" menu, same as there is before you open the address book, but nothing additional, rightmost or anywhere else, appears when I open the address book ... and I already uninstalled Netscape, so now I can't get back to work ... dingbats! :(

Num3 · Post by **Num3** » Thu Jul 03, 2003 10:19 pm

Personally i use Kaufman MailWarrior, it is the most similar i've ever seen made to YAM in Pc.

Backup and install is easy... i just RAR the dir

and unrar to reinstall

http://pages.infinit.net/kaufman/Index.htm

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