1. I was referring to IMAP indexing. If I open a folder with 1000 large emails, pine has been noticeably snappier. Ditty when I sort them.
2. Searching through IMAP is part of the protocol. It used to be that mutt didn't implement this--it would have to download the message to search it. Pine and mulberry and gnus have done this. I don't know if it has changed. If mutt still hasn't implemented this, the bottleneck is very much the client, as it doesn't use the speedier protocol!
3. No. IMAP protocol lets you store anything you please. The folders are compartmentalized & don't effect any other client. I am unaware of polluting mail folders either. It is true that pine can read/write MANY different folder formats, some of which are similar to others, but different enough that some other clients which don't support the specific format would choke. I think all setup is stored in dotfiles. It is nice to be able to pull these from IMAP. IMSP/ACAP are also nice, of course. I do wish pine supported them, but my work's IMAP server doesn't run those anyway. Storing my configuration directly in an IMAP folder is quite nice. Incidentally, ACAP is somewhat dead. IMSP does have several free servers.
4. Just as you can flag a message seen, important, answered, deleted, and draft (which are the fairly standard flags), IMAP lets you setup your own user-defined flags. Mutt didn't do this the last time I checked. IETF draft
----
Fedora has a nice approach to free software. It is similar to debian's. I have no problems with it. Red Hat Enerprise Linux also dropped pine support. But they ship a ton of software that isn't libre & some which isn't even gratis. THIS is what I am griping about. If they were just consistent, it would be much better. As it is, they only seem to drop the non-libre products that the community makes noise about (pine, xfree...). This is silly.
Top parent didn't indicate if he was talking about Fedora (which Red Hat doesn't ship) or Red Hat Enterprise Linux (which they do). Yes, Fedora embraces libre software. RHEL includes nonfree software. Neither includes pine.
Mutt has long since caught up, and I can't think of a single way which Pine's IMAP implementation is superior to Mutt's. I would be interested to hear if you have an example?
I will sheepishly admit I haven't tried the latest release of mutt. I do try it from time-to-time, as it seems as EVERYONE else is using it & I don't want to be caught with un under-developed mail-app. Please correct any mistakes on my part. If all of my mistakes are corrected, I'll drop pine right now!
Slower indexing of IMAP folders
Can't search across multiple mailboxes (and the IMAP searches are slow & weren't implemented all that well)
Can't store mutt configuration in an IMAP directory
No support for user-defined labels & modifying flags (such as "deleted") is a bit cumbersome.
I grant that it would be nice if pine was truly "free." But Red hat hasn't had any qualms about shipping non-free software.
I never said it shouldn't be used because RMS said it was bad, I said it shouldn't be distributed because distros need to be able to ship modified binaries.
Apologies for a slightly extremist remark on my part. I meant nothing against you & only a little against the maintainers of the distros. I find it suspect that many of the distros who DO ship non-free software suddenly stop shipping something when the FSF starts raising hell about the license.
Gentoo's users might be happy recompiling everything
makes it troublesome for anyone who wants to provide the program on a shared machine where they don't want the users to have access to a compiler
I grant this could be a pain in the butt if you wanted a binary-only distro. I would think that so many other things would make not having a compiler such a pain in the butt, that the ideal solution would be to use access rights to restrict the compiler to be used by root only.
As mentioned in another post: I do wish that pine was more free. Or that mutt or gnus suited my needs. I am also fine with distros who don't ship pine or xfree because they simply don't want to. But it seems silly to harp on the license when you ship other software that isn't libre.
I've used mutt's IMAP. It does exist. It just isn't as good as pine's. IMAP is great and it is unfortunate that the two best IMAP clients are pine (which isn't libre) and mulberry (which isn't even gratis). Evolution has pretty good IMAP, but is overkill for me & there aren't currently any text-based clients (which I prefer) that approach the support I desire.
So apply the patch and compile it. But Red Hat won't do it for you because they can't distribute a binary based on modified source.
Again, the stock binary pine would be good enough to be included in the distro. But, why can't they provide an SRPM which has the pine source & the diffs that they may want to add & install from source?
If Red Hat can't patch pine even to fix bugs, why should they distribute it? If you need it you can always compile it yourself.
I'm not saying they have to include it. I said I was fine with Debian not including it, for example. Red Hat and other distros ship non-free software. Java SDK, xv, OpenMotif, opera, macromedia flash, acrobat reader, etc. aren't libre. Many distros include some or all of these. I think it is silly to decide not to ship XFree or pine or other non-libre software because of licensing issues if you ship other packages that are at least as bad.
Pine has a superior IMAP implementation than any of these alternatives. The source is available for free. You can release patches to Pine. It is also easy to write scripts for it. Red Hat had done this at one time.
What modifications are needed to it in the first place? The stock-binary is well-maintained. And it is easy enough to apply a patch to the source code & recompile.
OSERP is under active development, but is still very alpha. I thought Hydrant had died, but some of the CVS files have been updated within the past year.
Why take RMS's opinion on free/nonfree as scripture? It is funny to see gratis software that ships with source being bashed for not being libre more than progams which don't ship with source.
I don't have a problem with Debian's commitment to libre software & their choice not to ship pine. But other distros don't seem to have a consistent stance on how free apps have to be before they're included.
All these graphics seem too bloated. My shell has functionality above and beyond delete. It is smaller, faster & I can slay files & directories without the boss being any the wiser.
PG's licensing terms state this "Commercial use: The 'small print' license includes a royalty schedule for commercial use of the Project Gutenberg trademark, including any sort of resale."
PG2 will have to pay PG. PG will see money from PG2's subscribers.
"Project Gutenberg 2 is not affiliated with the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and has received no funding, materials, or any other support from the Foundation." So despite the stigma of paying for IP, this project will do little harm to PG, which will still release other public domain works for free.
By including PG2, they are becoming a first-rate library that will be able to release material that the free service wasn't able to. I'm sure schools and universities will watch for what PDFs will be made available. I'll be watching to see what audiobooks they put out.
This is certainly no worse than IMDB going commercial. Just because they will charge money for some products doesn't mean they are EVIL. Few people raise hell because Mandrake charges for a boxed set of their distro. The free stuff will still be there, but some value-added services deserve remuneration.
From what I heard, the new movie isn't directly based on any of the stories. It started as an original work & was adapted to add parts of the Asimov universe.
IMDB shows him on the writing credits. But this is an original work & not a direct adaption of any of Asimov's stories. It is just a shame that they got the rights to use the title in the first place.
I don't think HTPCs are a cheaper alternative. TiVos and ReplayTVs use significantly less power than a PC. Energy costs are quite significant over the lifetime of a unit.
Lifetime subscription fees are fairly reasonable compared to the cost of new hardware for a HTPC.
There are also hacks to create program guides for the PVR to read. This is useful to overseas users. I frown on this for those in the states--you should obey the TOS and the PVR manufacturers make money on the subscriptions & their products are of high enough quality that they should be supported.
I have setup MythTV boxes. But it wasn't for the price. My workhorse is a refurbed ReplayTV 5040 with lifetime subscription that I picked up for much less than the cost of a new HTPC.
pine is passe, i dropped it like 5 years ago... maildir is the way. Pine groks maildir. there is nothing better than mutt/vi/procmail combo. bring on those spammers.. Pine + vi + procmail works fine.
I agree completely with you about the ease of use. I would just like to point out that #1 isn't really all that bad for pine as most think. My grandparents use Pine. They don't know what.pinerc is. Pine includes a setup that is great for text-based clients: From the program's menu, one of the options is "S-Setup-Configure Pine Options." Pressing it will show you many things you can change, including the current configuration. When you hit "C," it will list everything you could want to change. Pressing "?" on any option will tell you what they mean & often offer examples.
I would argue that Outlook's congfiguration is no easier. It certainly has less help available. Pictures CAN make it more COMFORTABLE, but they don't make it "easier."
You can also make header colors different than body colors (which you can't do in mutt). No problem doing that with mutt here. Set colors for hdrdefault and header, plus body. Right. I meant you can make ONE particular header color different than all other colors. This can be seen here.
Err, Openwebmail is open, as in source. Perhaps my choice of words could have been better. I know it is open source. I didn't mean proprietary as in the GNU definition of proprietary as "not free." I meant that it is better to have the server setup to support open standards, such that people could choose any client that also conformed to those standards to get the increased functionality that you are getting from installing a more "unique kludge."
Since he didn't include it, I will. I won't do one for Pine or mutt, because they aren't GUI, which was one of his criteria. MULBERRY: YES Mail import YES New mail notification Yes Encryption No Follow-ups Yes Forward attached/Inline Yes Write HTML mail Yes Multiple accounts No Customizable keybindings Yes Full index search Yes Advanced searching Yes IMAP search Yes Search folders No4 Spam filter Yes Handle mailing lists Yes Do not download mail rules Yes Labels for e-mail Yes Create filter from message No Emoticons Yes LDAP Yes Message threading mbx Mail storage format
"Mulberry is a high-performance, scalable, and graphically groovy internet mail client. It uses the IMAP (IMAP4rev1, IMAP4, and IMAP2bis) protocol for accessing mail messages on a server, the standard SMTP protocol for sending messages, and does lots and lots of things with MIME parts for mixed text and "attachments" of many different types of files and data. Version 3 introduces support for a new optional 3-pane window mode, a spell-as-you-type capability, as well as many other features, enhancements and fixes!"
It handles IMAP better than the alternatives that are reviews & also does POP3. It can communicate over SSL or TLS. It has NTLM and MD5 authentication. It can use LDAP, but also the wonderful IMSP or ACAP for storing user settings and addressbooks on a remote server. It has a PGP+SMIME plugin
It is available for a nominal fee for Mac, Win, Linux, and Solaris.
Mail import:It can import mbx formatted local mail.
Account setup: It has both simple and advance setips of multiple accounts that can be stored in identities.
Filters: By clicking on Make Rule, you can make a filter for ANY header field, the size of the message, flags, or the body based on if they contain or don't contain certain text, if they are greater or less than a certain size, or if flags are set or unset. Filters can set flags, move/copy/forward/reply/bounce/reject/expunge/prin t/save/view/speak a message or toggle an alert.
Address book: The addressbook can automatically save adresses as you send or receive messages. It can also import addressbooks. The IMSP/ACAP support is great.
Searching: Multiple rules can be applied and multiple boxes (local or remote) can be searched.
Reading messages: Optional columns include: to/from/reply to/sender/cc/subject/thread/date sent/date received/size/flags/number/smart address/attachments/parts/matching/disconnected. It can be sorted on any of these.
The preview pane is normally used to read messages, but double-clicking on a message brings it up in its own window. HTML/text/rich mail can be viewed as formatted/plaintext/source. The Raw message can also be viewed. Quoted text is colored by default. This is configurable.
No calendar integration--This is EMAIL, not groupware. No usenet--this is EMAIL, not NNTP No AIM/ICQ--This is EMAIL, not IM
Composing messages: Replying is great--reply to sender/all/reply-to/none. It lists all email addresses in Reply-to/sender/to/cc tags & lets you individually modify all of these. Quote a selection or the whole message or none of it. The composer lets you see To/cc/bcc/subject/parts (including attachments/copy to/the identity you're using. I actually wish it wold let you see a few more header fields. Add signature to all emails or click on a button to add it. You can request a receipt. You can postpone a message. On-the-fly spell checking. Paste, paste as quote. Quote/unquote/requote/wrap/unwrap/cut/copy/delete/ spell check a selection. Sends rich/plain/html mail. Plain by default!!!!
IMAP: IMAP is better than any of the other products. It was built as an IMAP client first.
Encryption: Plugin for PGP, GPG, and S/MIME. The integration of this plugin is great. I think it is only a plugin because of export restrictions & the fact that many don't need this feature.
To me, if a peice of software is well organized and feature rich, it's very nice. I don't see any other way of looking at it. If some of those features don't work well, that isn't very nice. If some are broken completely or missing, that sucks completely.
It is a good Exchange client, of course (if it wasn't even that, something would be seriously wrong!). But I wouldn't suggest anyone use it as a general purpose email client, which is how it is promoted. There are plenty of open standards for email, and a good email client should support them. Just because YOU don't use IMAP doesn't mean that a user shouldn't expect to be able to when he chooses a program.
I didn't mean to bash MS, or even outlook. I just meant to say there is less expensive software that is, at the very least, more standards-compliant.
- Mutt loads my 9,000 messages (approx.) mbox faster than pine (haven't compared elm/gnus). This is also a function of how you're loading those messages. I don't know about POP performance. Pine is considerably faster at IMAP. It also supports a billion local mailbox formats, some of which are speedier than others.
- Searching for a particular messages takes me atleast 1/10th the time on mutt because it allows localizing searches and sorting results. Don't ever challenge any mutt user on this one. This will also depend on how you're getting your mail. But I will grant you that the reg exp searches are quite good & mutt probably wins on searching ability. Now if only Mutt could search across multiple mailboxes...
Pine/Elm are not colorful, which is a very usable feature I believe. Pine has color. I have different colors for different levels of quoting setup. I also have it set to mark different colors using filters (so mail from someone I don't know is a different color from someone I don't). You can also make header colors different than body colors (which you can't do in mutt).
- Threading. Don't know if Pine/Elm have it (please correct me if I'm wrong)? Pine threads. I think I may like Mutt's threading better still, but Pine does it quickly & accurately.
- Mutt allows keybindings for almost everything. So, when I press F7, I see all messages from my friends; Esc F7 -> everything except from my friends; F8 -> Friends + Family; F9 ->... This is one thing I am jealous of. I'm also jealous of the macro language & scriptability of mutt. Finally, you guys have a smaller footprint (though I suspect that the lack of features that Pine has out of the box has a lot to do with that).
Reasons why I sometimes hate Mutt: I would add: 4. the addressbook is crappy 5. IMAP features leave a lot to be desired
I think you are disagreeing with my comment on Pine being even better than Mulberry. They are both excellent at IMAP. I just like some things that Pine does better.
I didn't make this page, but I agree with most of what Nancy has to say.
Slashdot Mirror
1. I was referring to IMAP indexing. If I open a folder with 1000 large emails, pine has been noticeably snappier. Ditty when I sort them.
2. Searching through IMAP is part of the protocol. It used to be that mutt didn't implement this--it would have to download the message to search it. Pine and mulberry and gnus have done this. I don't know if it has changed. If mutt still hasn't implemented this, the bottleneck is very much the client, as it doesn't use the speedier protocol!
3. No. IMAP protocol lets you store anything you please. The folders are compartmentalized & don't effect any other client. I am unaware of polluting mail folders either. It is true that pine can read/write MANY different folder formats, some of which are similar to others, but different enough that some other clients which don't support the specific format would choke. I think all setup is stored in dotfiles. It is nice to be able to pull these from IMAP. IMSP/ACAP are also nice, of course. I do wish pine supported them, but my work's IMAP server doesn't run those anyway. Storing my configuration directly in an IMAP folder is quite nice. Incidentally, ACAP is somewhat dead. IMSP does have several free servers.
4. Just as you can flag a message seen, important, answered, deleted, and draft (which are the fairly standard flags), IMAP lets you setup your own user-defined flags. Mutt didn't do this the last time I checked. IETF draft
----
Fedora has a nice approach to free software. It is similar to debian's. I have no problems with it. Red Hat Enerprise Linux also dropped pine support. But they ship a ton of software that isn't libre & some which isn't even gratis. THIS is what I am griping about. If they were just consistent, it would be much better. As it is, they only seem to drop the non-libre products that the community makes noise about (pine, xfree...). This is silly.
Top parent didn't indicate if he was talking about Fedora (which Red Hat doesn't ship) or Red Hat Enterprise Linux (which they do). Yes, Fedora embraces libre software. RHEL includes nonfree software. Neither includes pine.
Mutt has long since caught up, and I can't think of a single way which Pine's IMAP implementation is superior to Mutt's. I would be interested to hear if you have an example?
I will sheepishly admit I haven't tried the latest release of mutt. I do try it from time-to-time, as it seems as EVERYONE else is using it & I don't want to be caught with un under-developed mail-app. Please correct any mistakes on my part. If all of my mistakes are corrected, I'll drop pine right now!
I grant that it would be nice if pine was truly "free." But Red hat hasn't had any qualms about shipping non-free software.
I never said it shouldn't be used because RMS said it was bad, I said it shouldn't be distributed because distros need to be able to ship modified binaries.
Apologies for a slightly extremist remark on my part. I meant nothing against you & only a little against the maintainers of the distros. I find it suspect that many of the distros who DO ship non-free software suddenly stop shipping something when the FSF starts raising hell about the license.
Gentoo's users might be happy recompiling everything
And now I must acknowlege my bias :)
The modifications can be as simple as telling it to look for config files
This particular example doesn't need a patch
makes it troublesome for anyone who wants to provide the program on a shared machine where they don't want the users to have access to a compiler
I grant this could be a pain in the butt if you wanted a binary-only distro. I would think that so many other things would make not having a compiler such a pain in the butt, that the ideal solution would be to use access rights to restrict the compiler to be used by root only.
As mentioned in another post: I do wish that pine was more free. Or that mutt or gnus suited my needs. I am also fine with distros who don't ship pine or xfree because they simply don't want to. But it seems silly to harp on the license when you ship other software that isn't libre.
What security issues are ther in 4.58? I don't see them dropping openssh, despite ongoing security issues with that.
I was using imap with mutt back in 1999.
I've used mutt's IMAP. It does exist. It just isn't as good as pine's. IMAP is great and it is unfortunate that the two best IMAP clients are pine (which isn't libre) and mulberry (which isn't even gratis). Evolution has pretty good IMAP, but is overkill for me & there aren't currently any text-based clients (which I prefer) that approach the support I desire.
So apply the patch and compile it. But Red Hat won't do it for you because they can't distribute a binary based on modified source.
Again, the stock binary pine would be good enough to be included in the distro. But, why can't they provide an SRPM which has the pine source & the diffs that they may want to add & install from source?
If Red Hat can't patch pine even to fix bugs, why should they distribute it? If you need it you can always compile it yourself.
I'm not saying they have to include it. I said I was fine with Debian not including it, for example. Red Hat and other distros ship non-free software. Java SDK, xv, OpenMotif, opera, macromedia flash, acrobat reader, etc. aren't libre. Many distros include some or all of these. I think it is silly to decide not to ship XFree or pine or other non-libre software because of licensing issues if you ship other packages that are at least as bad.
Pine has a superior IMAP implementation than any of these alternatives. The source is available for free. You can release patches to Pine. It is also easy to write scripts for it. Red Hat had done this at one time.
What modifications are needed to it in the first place? The stock-binary is well-maintained. And it is easy enough to apply a patch to the source code & recompile.
OSERP is under active development, but is still very alpha. I thought Hydrant had died, but some of the CVS files have been updated within the past year.
Why take RMS's opinion on free/nonfree as scripture? It is funny to see gratis software that ships with source being bashed for not being libre more than progams which don't ship with source.
I don't have a problem with Debian's commitment to libre software & their choice not to ship pine. But other distros don't seem to have a consistent stance on how free apps have to be before they're included.
All these graphics seem too bloated. My shell has functionality above and beyond delete. It is smaller, faster & I can slay files & directories without the boss being any the wiser.
PG's licensing terms state this "Commercial use: The 'small print' license includes a royalty schedule for commercial use of the Project Gutenberg trademark, including any sort of resale."
PG2 will have to pay PG. PG will see money from PG2's subscribers.
"Project Gutenberg 2 is not affiliated with the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and has received no funding, materials, or any other support from the Foundation." So despite the stigma of paying for IP, this project will do little harm to PG, which will still release other public domain works for free.
By including PG2, they are becoming a first-rate library that will be able to release material that the free service wasn't able to. I'm sure schools and universities will watch for what PDFs will be made available. I'll be watching to see what audiobooks they put out.
This is certainly no worse than IMDB going commercial. Just because they will charge money for some products doesn't mean they are EVIL. Few people raise hell because Mandrake charges for a boxed set of their distro. The free stuff will still be there, but some value-added services deserve remuneration.
Interesting--in the classic episode, Leonard Nimoy played a reporter. I'll have to see the newer version.
From what I heard, the new movie isn't directly based on any of the stories. It started as an original work & was adapted to add parts of the Asimov universe.
IMDB shows him on the writing credits. But this is an original work & not a direct adaption of any of Asimov's stories. It is just a shame that they got the rights to use the title in the first place.
It is too bad that this is neither a remake of the old Outer Limits episode, nor Harlan Ellison's screenplay.
I don't think HTPCs are a cheaper alternative. TiVos and ReplayTVs use significantly less power than a PC. Energy costs are quite significant over the lifetime of a unit.
Lifetime subscription fees are fairly reasonable compared to the cost of new hardware for a HTPC.
There are also hacks to create program guides for the PVR to read. This is useful to overseas users. I frown on this for those in the states--you should obey the TOS and the PVR manufacturers make money on the subscriptions & their products are of high enough quality that they should be supported.
I have setup MythTV boxes. But it wasn't for the price. My workhorse is a refurbed ReplayTV 5040 with lifetime subscription that I picked up for much less than the cost of a new HTPC.
a port of cowsay?
pine is passe, i dropped it like 5 years ago...
maildir is the way.
Pine groks maildir.
there is nothing better than mutt/vi/procmail combo. bring on those spammers..
Pine + vi + procmail works fine.
I agree completely with you about the ease of use. I would just like to point out that #1 isn't really all that bad for pine as most think. My grandparents use Pine. They don't know what .pinerc is. Pine includes a setup that is great for text-based clients: From the program's menu, one of the options is "S-Setup-Configure Pine Options." Pressing it will show you many things you can change, including the current configuration. When you hit "C," it will list everything you could want to change. Pressing "?" on any option will tell you what they mean & often offer examples.
I would argue that Outlook's congfiguration is no easier. It certainly has less help available. Pictures CAN make it more COMFORTABLE, but they don't make it "easier."
You can also make header colors different than body colors (which you can't do in mutt).
No problem doing that with mutt here. Set colors for hdrdefault and header, plus body.
Right. I meant you can make ONE particular header color different than all other colors. This can be seen here.
Err, Openwebmail is open, as in source.
Perhaps my choice of words could have been better. I know it is open source. I didn't mean proprietary as in the GNU definition of proprietary as "not free." I meant that it is better to have the server setup to support open standards, such that people could choose any client that also conformed to those standards to get the increased functionality that you are getting from installing a more "unique kludge."
Since he didn't include it, I will. I won't do one for Pine or mutt, because they aren't GUI, which was one of his criteria.
n t/save/view/speak a message or toggle an alert.
/ spell check a selection. Sends rich/plain/html mail. Plain by default!!!!
MULBERRY:
YES Mail import
YES New mail notification
Yes Encryption
No Follow-ups
Yes Forward attached/Inline
Yes Write HTML mail
Yes Multiple accounts
No Customizable keybindings
Yes Full index search
Yes Advanced searching
Yes IMAP search
Yes Search folders
No4 Spam filter
Yes Handle mailing lists
Yes Do not download mail rules
Yes Labels for e-mail
Yes Create filter from message
No Emoticons
Yes LDAP
Yes Message threading
mbx Mail storage format
"Mulberry is a high-performance, scalable, and graphically groovy internet mail client. It uses the IMAP (IMAP4rev1, IMAP4, and IMAP2bis) protocol for accessing mail messages on a server, the standard SMTP protocol for sending messages, and does lots and lots of things with MIME parts for mixed text and "attachments" of many different types of files and data. Version 3 introduces support for a new optional 3-pane window mode, a spell-as-you-type capability, as well as many other features, enhancements and fixes!"
It handles IMAP better than the alternatives that are reviews & also does POP3. It can communicate over SSL or TLS. It has NTLM and MD5 authentication. It can use LDAP, but also the wonderful IMSP or ACAP for storing user settings and addressbooks on a remote server. It has a PGP+SMIME plugin
It is available for a nominal fee for Mac, Win, Linux, and Solaris.
Mail import:It can import mbx formatted local mail.
Account setup: It has both simple and advance setips of multiple accounts that can be stored in identities.
Filters: By clicking on Make Rule, you can make a filter for ANY header field, the size of the message, flags, or the body based on if they contain or don't contain certain text, if they are greater or less than a certain size, or if flags are set or unset. Filters can set flags, move/copy/forward/reply/bounce/reject/expunge/pri
Address book: The addressbook can automatically save adresses as you send or receive messages. It can also import addressbooks. The IMSP/ACAP support is great.
Searching: Multiple rules can be applied and multiple boxes (local or remote) can be searched.
Reading messages: Optional columns include: to/from/reply to/sender/cc/subject/thread/date sent/date received/size/flags/number/smart address/attachments/parts/matching/disconnected. It can be sorted on any of these.
The preview pane is normally used to read messages, but double-clicking on a message brings it up in its own window. HTML/text/rich mail can be viewed as formatted/plaintext/source. The Raw message can also be viewed. Quoted text is colored by default. This is configurable.
No calendar integration--This is EMAIL, not groupware.
No usenet--this is EMAIL, not NNTP
No AIM/ICQ--This is EMAIL, not IM
Composing messages: Replying is great--reply to sender/all/reply-to/none. It lists all email addresses in Reply-to/sender/to/cc tags & lets you individually modify all of these. Quote a selection or the whole message or none of it. The composer lets you see To/cc/bcc/subject/parts (including attachments/copy to/the identity you're using. I actually wish it wold let you see a few more header fields. Add signature to all emails or click on a button to add it. You can request a receipt. You can postpone a message. On-the-fly spell checking. Paste, paste as quote. Quote/unquote/requote/wrap/unwrap/cut/copy/delete
IMAP: IMAP is better than any of the other products. It was built as an IMAP client first.
Encryption: Plugin for PGP, GPG, and S/MIME. The integration of this plugin is great. I think it is only a plugin because of export restrictions & the fact that many don't need this feature.
To me, if a peice of software is well organized and feature rich, it's very nice. I don't see any other way of looking at it.
If some of those features don't work well, that isn't very nice. If some are broken completely or missing, that sucks completely.
It is a good Exchange client, of course (if it wasn't even that, something would be seriously wrong!). But I wouldn't suggest anyone use it as a general purpose email client, which is how it is promoted. There are plenty of open standards for email, and a good email client should support them. Just because YOU don't use IMAP doesn't mean that a user shouldn't expect to be able to when he chooses a program.
I didn't mean to bash MS, or even outlook. I just meant to say there is less expensive software that is, at the very least, more standards-compliant.
- Mutt loads my 9,000 messages (approx.) mbox faster than pine (haven't compared elm/gnus).
...
This is also a function of how you're loading those messages. I don't know about POP performance. Pine is considerably faster at IMAP. It also supports a billion local mailbox formats, some of which are speedier than others.
- Searching for a particular messages takes me atleast 1/10th the time on mutt because it allows localizing searches and sorting results. Don't ever challenge any mutt user on this one.
This will also depend on how you're getting your mail. But I will grant you that the reg exp searches are quite good & mutt probably wins on searching ability. Now if only Mutt could search across multiple mailboxes...
Pine/Elm are not colorful, which is a very usable feature I believe.
Pine has color. I have different colors for different levels of quoting setup. I also have it set to mark different colors using filters (so mail from someone I don't know is a different color from someone I don't). You can also make header colors different than body colors (which you can't do in mutt).
- Threading. Don't know if Pine/Elm have it (please correct me if I'm wrong)?
Pine threads. I think I may like Mutt's threading better still, but Pine does it quickly & accurately.
- Mutt allows keybindings for almost everything. So, when I press F7, I see all messages from my friends; Esc F7 -> everything except from my friends; F8 -> Friends + Family; F9 ->
This is one thing I am jealous of. I'm also jealous of the macro language & scriptability of mutt. Finally, you guys have a smaller footprint (though I suspect that the lack of features that Pine has out of the box has a lot to do with that).
Reasons why I sometimes hate Mutt:
I would add:
4. the addressbook is crappy
5. IMAP features leave a lot to be desired
I think you are disagreeing with my comment on Pine being even better than Mulberry. They are both excellent at IMAP. I just like some things that Pine does better.
I didn't make this page, but I agree with most of what Nancy has to say.
I came to appreciate the ability to open multiple windows at the same time.
This alone made the switch worth it to me.
I grant that this isn't easy in shell-based solutions.
Well, with PC-pine you can also open a message in a new window.
Throw in easy attachments (double click, drag and drop) and it becomes very persuasive to move to a GUI client.
Also possible in PC-pine.