Best graphical IMAP client

EnsignRicki · n00b Joined: 16 Jan 2003 Posts: 49

Can anyone recommend a good graphical IMAP client? I know there are quite a few out there and most are quite good. However there is one particular feature I am looking for that none of them seem to have.

In my IMAP account I have setup server side filters to filter incoming e-mail into various folders on the IMAP server. Now in Outlook Express in MS Windows when I start the program or click the Get New Mail button it checks every single subfolder on the IMAP server for new mail. I have yet to find a linux client that does this. The ones I've seen check the "Inbox" only and not any of the other subfolders. Of course if I click in any given subfolder it will show me the new messages. But when you have 20+ subfolders it's a nifty little feature to be able to press one button and immediately see if you have any new mail in any one of the subfolders.

tecknojunky · Posted: Tue Jan 28, 2003 10:42 am Post subject:

I don't quite understand your feature. Check Evolution. It seem to be some kind of clone of MS Outlook and, as such, my have that feature your looking for (altougt i'm not sure).
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green sun · Guru Joined: 04 Nov 2002 Posts: 325 Location: Wista, MA

I believe Evolution does this.

There is also an option in Mozilla Mail to do this (not running it ATM, but I remember it being there). Personally I didn't like MozMail because it didnt handle multiple accounts well. Evolution seems to handle having multiple accounts (IMAP to somewhere, POP to somewhere else, etc...)

EnsignRicki · n00b Joined: 16 Jan 2003 Posts: 49

Thanks. Do you know of anything other than Evolution?

foxcub · Posted: Tue Jan 28, 2003 6:29 pm Post subject:

I can personally recommend KMail. I use it in the same setting as you described (mail filtered into folders on server-side), and it works like a charm. When you do "Check New Mail", it checks all the subfolders.

474 · l33t Joined: 19 Apr 2002 Posts: 714

Yes. Sylpheed or even better, Sylpheed-Claws. Lightweight, free of cruft and bloat, superfast, flexible and powerful. Uses gtk1. Masked ebuild (0.8.5) seems very stable to me:

foxcub · Posted: Tue Jan 28, 2003 6:42 pm Post subject:

Don't worry about offending me... even though, I really like KMail for a number of reasons, I won't get offended. So, please, tell us what's wrong with KMail that isn't wrong with other email clients?

474 · l33t Joined: 19 Apr 2002 Posts: 714

foxcub · Posted: Tue Jan 28, 2003 7:44 pm Post subject:

474 · l33t Joined: 19 Apr 2002 Posts: 714

foxcub · Posted: Tue Jan 28, 2003 7:54 pm Post subject:

Well, that's the thing; to test whether you can read cyrillic in it, I can send you an email with some Russian in it. Writing is a whole different story (just as critical for me obviously); Gnome probably has something to support different keyboard layouts and encodings, but it's definitely well-hidden (as opposed to KDE

... I really shouldn't say this). Alternatively, you can launch evolution from KDE, switch the keyboard layout, and try to type in Cyrillic - I can be more detailed if you want to try that.

blofeld · n00b Joined: 21 Jan 2003 Posts: 36 Location: Vienna

You can also use mozilla mail. But by default, as you might have observed, it does only check the Inbox folder.
So you have to walk one time through all folders you would like to have autmatically be checked, right-click -> Properties -> and check "Check this folder for new mail".

I've been using mozilla mail, because of it's superb handling of different multiple accounts - whats wrong about it?

asimon · Posted: Tue Jan 28, 2003 8:04 pm Post subject:

474 · l33t Joined: 19 Apr 2002 Posts: 714

474 · l33t Joined: 19 Apr 2002 Posts: 714

sarnold · Posted: Tue Jan 28, 2003 8:20 pm Post subject: Still looking...

I'm still looking for an IMAP client as good as Pegasus (so sue me, Pegasus is the still the best overall mail client I've ever used).

I run the current version of courier IMAP, and all the IMAP clients I've tried still have significant bugs and/or holes. I currently use mozilla mail sometimes, and evolution other times (evo is the only one with syncing tools for my Zaurus/Qtopia).

Even with the imap-client-workaround setting on the server, I still have way too many problems with mail clients

I haven't tried several mentioned above, so I'll have to get on that; do any support any handheld sync tools? Which is the most stable with courier IMAP? Which has the most support for the standard?

green sun · Guru Joined: 04 Nov 2002 Posts: 325 Location: Wista, MA

474 · l33t Joined: 19 Apr 2002 Posts: 714

474 · l33t Joined: 19 Apr 2002 Posts: 714

BillyD · Guru Joined: 05 May 2002 Posts: 323 Location: Australia

The latest releases of Evolution have seriously borked it's i18n ability, but for me that was a good thing. I was using Evolution which happily allowed me to both display and enter Japanese alongside English, but it would seem it has been broken (not just for Japanese, but all "non-standard" character sets.) So why was this good for me? It gave me the opportunity to try out Sylpheed-claws, which I am quite fond of.

Evolution beats it hands down for the eye-candy factor, but IMO Sylpheed (claws) is easy to use, very configurable and basically all you could want in a mail client.
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474 · l33t Joined: 19 Apr 2002 Posts: 714

maw · Posted: Tue Jan 28, 2003 10:02 pm Post subject:

With any luck, the GNOME2 port of Evolution should be far better with internationalisation thanks to GTK2. Assuming they do it right...
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BillyD · Guru Joined: 05 May 2002 Posts: 323 Location: Australia

I am not sure about that max, from reading the evolution mailing lists it appears they don't have anyone with half a clue about implementing non standard character sets at this stage. Their standard answer to the majority of questions about it are "Well, gee, it should be working...". There are a few evolution hackers about that came up with solutions/workarounds early on, but the latest release is broken.

Hopefully the whole pango/gnome 2 thing will solve many of the problems gnome has had with different character sets, but I think in the end it will come down to a lot of hacking on the users part (which is how it should be in a way I guess) to get it all working properly.

Ximian have made an excellent product that is helping bring linux into more offices and putting it on more desktops, which is a good thing. Every good thing takes time and I am sure they will sort it all out in the end.

While we are on the subjects of gui's for mail and eye-candy, has anyone tried mahogony?
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EnsignRicki · n00b Joined: 16 Jan 2003 Posts: 49

ebrostig · Posted: Tue Jan 28, 2003 10:39 pm Post subject:

This has been a nice thread to read, with pro's and contra's about various email clients and KDE/gnome specific ones, without the usual flamewar

Good Job!

Now back to the issue.
I personally use KDE and Kmail.
However, I do things a little different as my corporate mail server has a 40MB limit. I use fetchmail to donwload all new emails from the IMAP server to my local box and then re-mails them to the correct local user with sendmail which I also use to send mail to our mailservers. I then use the filter option in Kmail heavily including 'spamassasin' to filter out spam. I have used Kmail now for years and it works for me

I have tried several other Email clients like Balsa, Evolution, Mozilla mail, Syplheed claws and others, but none has satisfied my needs the same way as Kmail has. It has several features that I personally like, one of them the incredible handlinbg of multibyte characters. I work for a very international comapny and from time to time someone sends out emails in Chinese, Japanes, Korean, Thai, Arabic, Russian, Hebrew and any other thinkable language. Kmail and KDE handles all of them very gracefully.

Until I find something better, I'll stick with Kmail.

Everyone is talking about resource hogs, but really not so. It takes very little cpu and memory: (from top right now)
3036 ebrostig 15 0 22156 21m 16m S 0.0 2.5 0:09.11 kmail

Total mem is 21MB, where 16MB is shared (Basically KDE background services), so Kmail takes up a wopping 5MB of ram, yeah it's huge

It uses 0.0% CPU since it is idle right now, yeah a real resource hog

I hoenstly don't understand why people says it uses a lot of resources and is bloated. That's not how I see it.

Erik
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