[Discuss] FOSS email that doesn't suck -- does such a thing exist?

[Bill Cattey]

I'm interested in hearing how Mulberry holds up.  I just checked out the site, and sadly it looks like it's not been touched since 2007.

Back in the early '90s I used an exciting new multi-media mail user agent, 'messages' developed at Carnegie Mellon University as part of the Andrew project.  I liked it so much that I got it deployed as one of the officially supported Email clients at MIT Athena where it served well for a number of years.

As when I transitioned from my Kyocera smart phone to an Android, I find myself lamenting how, with the advance of time, the successor products are simply not as good as what they replace, and every time around they make the same usability mistakes, or forget more of the original lessons learned.

Here's a paper that gives a very quick overview of 'messages':  http://www.hps.com/~tpg/toolbox/auis/mail/
Somehow, since then, NO email program I've used since has managed as well as 'messages' to do the right thing with hitting the <space> bar:
	Next screenful of current message; 
	Next unseen message in current folder;
	Next subscribed folder.

Apple mail comes closest, but sometimes I just get so frustrated, I feel that I should, monk-like, devote a year of my life to porting the 'messages' interface to a modern platform. Instead, I repeat the behavior of my Multician friends and from the comfort of my armchair lament the current state of the art, but make no positive step to correct it.

Perhaps a revived Mulberry is a starting point for a FOSS project to revive lessons learned?

-Bill Cattey


On Mar 18, 2013, at 11:40 AM, Rich Pieri wrote:

> --On Sunday, March 17, 2013 9:02 PM -0400 Rich Pieri <richard.pieri at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> I've tried Mulberry and Mahogany in the past but I found them to be
>> missing critical features.
> 
> I may have been mistaken about Mulberry. Maybe I didn't actually poke around at it enough, or maybe I'm simply conflating it with something else. It's a little clunky in places like account management but it does so far seem to be able to do what I want.
> 
> Will see what happens when I put it under a real load later this week.
> 
> -- 
> Rich P.
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