Re: GNUMail sources

[Riccardo Mottola]

Hi Steven

Steven R. Baker wrote:
> > If you have isseus, let's discuss them, but there are some which I do
> > not know how to fix.
> > Which other apps are you  missing?
> Great question, and thank you for asking! There is a rather long and
> complicated answer here.

I actually intended to ask "what other apps of collaboration world" are 
you missing.
The fact that we miss a lot of stuff in GNUstep is a fact! Also, as your 
list shows, everybody has its personal preferences.


> About a year ago I gave up my Macs to return to ThinkPads running
> Debian. At the time of leaving the Mac, I was using the built-in stuff,
> plus Things, DEVONthink, and VoodooPad. So I'm looking for replacements
> of all of that. I've been struggling a lot with where to land, and
> contribute my efforts. I've spend some time on GNOME, KDE, and have even
> dabbled in Enlightenment land, to see what can provide everything I'm
> looking for *and* be an enjoyable place to contribute. So far I have
> found pros and cons, but I think I'm going to be happiest in GNUstep
> land.

One of my goals with GNUstep has always been to have a ThinkPad (and the 
old Vista and ThinkCentres) running it and make a workstation or laptop 
as NeXT would have done it. That is Mac, without all the gizmo :)
Especially since nowadays Macs are little more than PCs and Mac (and 
Windows) went down the route of being tabletized/phoneized more and more.

> I really miss the quantity and quality of what I'll broadly refer to as
> "Productivity Apps" on the Mac, and my life is considerably less chaotic
> and crazy when I'm a Mac user with a great suite of productivity
> applications. But I hate myself for supporting the closed, proprietary,
> unsustainable technology category. And, I find it hard to get "real
> work" done on a Mac.
>
> My first order of business is to get good replacements for AddressBook,
> Calendar, and Mail from OS X. I am currently working on some UI
> improvements to SimpleAgenda, and after that I'll focus on
> CardDav/CalDav support. The only thing I'm missing from GNUmail is IMAP
> IDLE support, which I'll have to figure out how to add to Pantomime, I
> guess. And some form of Sieve filter management.

I have no clue what IMAP IDLE is, but IMAP support in GNUmail works, but 
is not totally stable. When there are faults, the application crashes 
instead of recovering. Before adding new features to GNUMail, I'd like 
to stabilize it and clean up its code. It is a slow in-progress process.

You should use Addresses from GAP, which had a bit of fixes.

> I've also started (slowly) working on an app I'm calling "Tickler" which
> will be a GTD app (using TaskWarrior as a backend). Once that's usable,
> I'll probably be hooked for life. I have a few small projects I want to
> explore: an MTP browser for talking to my Android phone, NewsBlur
> support for Grr, a few dock apps for laptop-related things. And figuring
> out why Terminal.app flips its pancakes over Swedish characters in
> filenames.

No clue what you are mentioning there... however it is ironic what you 
say about Terminal, since the original Author is swedish. Sadly he 
doesn't contribute to it anymore.
I hope you are using Terminal from GAP.

> As I'm sure you'll understand, this takes time and patience, and while I
> have both in spades right now, it may not last. The quick responses on
> the GNUstep mailing lists is certainly encouraging. Of course, I intend
> to share my knowledge and work as I go.

It has been 13 years I am working on more and more apps, getting them to 
work and keeping them up to date.
Nice that you have enthusiasm, is it needed, because the task is immense :)
You will also understand when you check out the "vastity" of apps there 
that stabilizing them is an humongous task. I would rpefer several of 
them to have solid foundations before adding stuff...

So Check out what's around. If you are using Debian packages, remember 
several of them are very old and unstable. Eric Heintzmann is perhaps 
updating them and that would be very welcome!

Generally my compromise would be to have "less" but "something that 
works". My feeling of many Mac apps is that they are full of bells and 
whistles.
I do lack a bit the integrated Mac experience when i am on my 
GNUstep-ized environments.

Riccardo