New Mozilla-based Mail Client: Minotaur

Ant writes "Minotaur is a redesign of the Mozilla mail component. Our goal is to produce a cross platform stand alone mail application using the XUL user interface language. We are modeling ourselves after the Phoenix rewrite of the Mozilla browser. Our intended customer is someone who uses Phoenix (or another non mozilla.exe browser) as their primary browser and wants a mail client based on mozilla that "plays nice" with their browser. Currently, mozilla -mail is not a good option for these users because link clicks and attachments end up going to mozilla browser windows instead of the preferred browser. In addition, by focusing solely on stand alone mail, we believe we can make some dents in the overall footprint and performance of the mail client by removing components and chrome we don't need."

Comments

excellent!!

[garglblaster]

Actually this is what I've been waiting for some time now!

In fact I think it's a great idea to get away from the "kitchen sink" type of software packages and move on to more specialized programs that focus on one task and do it right!

Re:excellent!!

[TheRaven64]

One of the key features of the *NIX philosophy is that programs should have a few (or ideally one) features which they do really well. Vim / emacs (Please delete as appropriate) is a good text editor, but that's all. gcc is a good C compiler. grep is a good search function. If you want something complicated, then you join multiple simple programs together. If you need to spellcheck a document, then your editor should pipe it through ispell (or equivalent) and parse the results. This amount of modularity meant that you could build very complicated programs out of shell scripts, and only have the parts you were using in memory at any given time. This seems to be being lost in the Open Source community, where everyone wants to implement their own version of everything (with one or two exceptions like gcc, although that forked for a while).

Re:is mozilla dying for phoenix/minotaur?

[JanneM]

No. This is what Mozilla is supposed to achieve. Mozilla really is a platform for doing browser-related stuff; the browser itself is more of a technology demonstration than an end-user app, which is why it conatins so much stuff. Projects like Phoenix/minotaur/Galeon is intended to grow out of Mozilla just like it has.

Another wheel to re-invent?

[varjag]

Currently, mozilla -mail is not a good option for these users because link clicks and attachments end up going to mozilla browser windows instead of the preferred browser.

And that's it?

Wouldn't it be easier to add an option to specify preferred browser into Mozilla Mail preferences? I am not ranting - everyone is free to do whatever they want - but right now, when Mozilla Mail is finally stable and packed with some really good features, and at the same time many FS/OSS projects starve from lack of developers, what is the point of writing yet another MUA?

All we need now is some sort of news client.

[Gannoc]

We'll call it "Hydra" or something because of some obscure reference to heads/threads.

Then, after several thousand man-hours of work, we'll finally have the feature set of mozilla available to us.... BUT IN THREE SEPARATE BINARIES.

Sweet!!!

Re:Chrome

[kasperd]

As long as I have a decent GUI rather then an obtuse CLI

In fact what I would like to see is a mailer split into a CLI backend and a GUI frontend. The CLI backend should do the actual sending and retrieval of messages as well as managing folders. The GUI should be just that, it shouldn't store any data on its own, and all communication it should ever do would be with the backend and the Xserver. Configuration should to as large an extent as possible be stored by the backend, but a few options need to be stored by the GUI most notably the command to invoke the backend. It would be interesting that this command could possibly include a call of ssh to run backend and frontend on different computers (with display possibly being on a third computer). The communicaiton between frontend and backend should be kept as simple as possible. If I execute the backend directly from my commandline, I want a usable interface (at least for the average geek), but I don't want no fancy features like commandline editing or message editing. I want to use the exact same interface being provided as would have been to the frontend, and this should be as easy to use as telnet to an SMTP server would.

Apple Plug

[mrpuffypants]

Well, but this is all about what Apple is doing with their iApps:

Wanna make a movie? iMovie
Read your mail? Mail
Chat? iChat

I like this approach a lot better than a bloated program that has 50 features I never use. When I just want to read email and look at my calendar I just open up Mail and iCal. Done simply and effectively.

Re:I don't know

[bogie]

All your points make sense but this one

"I just hope this doesn't take someone's time who would be working on GNOME, KDE, OO.org, or a decent replacement for Macromedia Freehand/Adobe Illustrator :)."

Remember that's not the way open source works and is actually a huge stereotype. People work on what interests them and just because they work on project doesn't mean they'd be interested in working on another project even if it were similar. Open Source developers are not just one big pool of resources that can be pushed around where popular opinion thinks they should go.

Thank you

[Ars-Fartsica]

I'll tell you why, because downloading some source and changing a file menu is how these guys want to get notariety. Phoenix and Minotaur are pointless forks designed to get someone free cred points on the back of anothers' work.

Re:Thank you

[supercargo]

Your post and its parent are barely worth commenting on, but I'll give it shot: Mozilla is a whole lot more than I want or will ever use (integrated IRC? Composer?), Phoenix is small and fast, which is a beautiful thing. Have you ever used Lotus Notes? That's another do-it-all app that seeks to replace your operating system with components half as good as those developed for a specific task.

Phoenix and Minotaur are pointless forks designed to get someone free cred points on the back of anothers' work.

What exactly is the problem with standing on the shoulders of giants?

Freedom for the people! Liberate mail from the evil clutches of the Web Browser!