Re: Looking for the perfect mail client

Subject: Re: Looking for the perfect mail client

Date: Tue, 21 Oct 2014 11:18:59 +0000

To: notmuch@notmuchmail.org, Sepp Tannhuber

Cc:

From: Gaute Hope


Excerpts from Sepp Tannhuber's message of October 21, 2014 12:02:
> Dear all,
>
> I'm wondering whether there's a notmuch mail client
> - with a handling similar to alot
> - which is capable to show html content without html2ascii conversion
> - which can use vim as editor
> - which doesn't need a web browser
> - which doesn't need a mouse
> - which is fast
>
> In principle, alot is the perfect mail client for me except that I've
> many problems with all the html mails people send to me. So I'm wondering
> whether anybody knows a webkit based alot fork or something similar. It's
> strange that after so many years I'm still looking for the perfect mail
> client.

Hi Sepp,

I am working on something called 'astroid' which is a GTK+ and WebKit
based email client for notmuch.

- It can show html parts inline if you choose to.
- It shows previews of image attachments.
- It uses vim (embedded) as editor.
- It is entirely navigated using the keyboard (based on vim)
- It is fairly fast (but requires optimization of some parts) (probably
  disputed).

It is, however, very pre-alpha-beta. If you are brave enough,
please feel free to try it out:

  https://github.com/gauteh/astroid

There are some screenshots here:

  http://gaute.vetsj.com/arkiv/astroid/screenshots/

You can press '?' to get a brief overview of the keybindings (they are
based on those of sup [0]). But I haven't completed the help stuff yet,
in that case refer to the source code (did I mention it was pre-alpha?).

Not all features are ready (notably encryption), but it is complete
enough for daily usage - at least for me.

I was planning to make it a little bit more user friendly to try out and
use before I announced it, but I think it fits your description (it was
at least what I was attempting to solve when I started it). The
README.md [1] covers basic compilation and setup steps, and I tried to
collect what is required for setting astroid up on a fresh Ubuntu in the
wiki [2].

[0] http://supmua.org/
[1] https://github.com/gauteh/astroid/blob/master/README.md
[2] https://github.com/gauteh/astroid/wiki/Ubuntu


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