On Thu, 16 Jan 2020, Jon Trulson wrote:
I did it once for a customer using the alpine IMAP toolkit some years
ago.
I've worked with that same API. It ain't bad. There are others, too.
LibETpan works pretty well also. It's the same one Claws uses. I think it
already does SSL. If not, there is always hackery with stunnel.
Oh, and HTML rendering, and....
That's a good point. Things like libetpan would be able to handle the IMAP
protocol exchange and SSL also, but the HTML rendering is a big deal and
very problematic security-wise. There aren't a lot of lightweight HTML
renderers that are up-to-date enough to handle modern HTML email. Sure,
there are things like Webkit and Gecko but they are HUGE. It'd be
interesting to see something more like Dillo's engine which doesn't
support Javascript (cool for me, but most people would hate it) and might
be more managable. However, I've never looked at the Dillo code or how
embedable it is or is not. However, there are a lot of lightweight
web-renderers APIs already out there, but few that would play well with
only C99 or ANSI as a compiler target. Also, given how much C++ is in CDE
someone might want to go that route, and I've noticed most C++ guys these
days want C++11. Old compilers would puke on that pretty badly. I guess it
all comes down to the preferences of the guy writing the code and willing
to do the work.
That's a nasty choice, integrate a humongous HTML rendering engine and
have to carry that requirement around on your back (and probably break a
ton of backwards compat with older systems that can't compile webkit
etc..) or you use a lightweight renderer to the howls of your users who
say it renders like trash, ignores JS, and ruins the look of the emails
they get. Ouch. Rock, meet hard place.
If I take a swing at it, I'd go the lightweight route, but speculative
opinions matter a heckuva lot less than the person who says "I'm gonna
pick this up and do it."
How about thunderbird? That's what I am using right now... Pisses me
off from time to time, but it works.
Thunderbird is great, it's just not a CDE "suite of applications" thingy.
It doesn't use MOTIF etc... It'd be just another app for dtwm to manage,
but heck yeah, it works.
Though to be honest, I no longer even use CDE as my DT of choice. I'm
firmly in the KDE camp and have been for the last 10 years.
Well, while we are sharing, I do use CDE about 20% of the time (mainly on
a thinkpad I still use a lot). However, on most machines I use Fluxbox and
a super-minimal desktop (no icons etc..).
I've been wondering why I waste my spare time continuing to maintain
CDE.
I'm glad you participate, nonetheless. Thanks for your past contributions,
too.
Perhaps it's time for someone who actually uses it day to day to
take over in a primary role. I'm about done to be honest. There's so
much more stuff out there that I'm interested in, and more willing to
spend precious spare time on. Any takers?
If you get fully sick of it and want to walk away I'd volunteer to help
transition it. I can at least help with the list management, domain
hosting, or something like that. However, there are others who are better
suited, I'd imagine, and I'm a dyed in the wool C-coder. My C++ blows. You
have so much more history with it and expertise the project would suffer.
From my perspective as a user/consumer, your departure would be a loss for
the project overall.
-S
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