e-mail client suggestions?

[Cyker]

"Bah! Not another one!" you're probably thinking.

Yup.

I'm currently using Thunderbird 1.5.0.10, after moving from Outlook Express under Windows.

It was alright at first, but as I run into more and more quirks, I'm getting sick of its lack of configurability (The fact that its content handling configurability is worse than OE's is just SAD ) and want out, but I don't know what else to try.

I'm looking for something lightweight - In the same vein as OE, or Eudora or Opera's M2; Definitely not something heavy like Outlook-style (So no KMail? )

But I want it to be configurable!
This is the biggest disappointment with Thunderbird for me; I thought all the extensions would make it supremely configurable, but they tend to only add behaviour rather than let you change behaviours.

The pre-reqs I want out of the client are:
+ Ability to top-post reply with a full ---Original Message---/Date/From/To/Subject section break between posts (TB can do with an extension)
+ Ability to disable the goddamned >>>>>>>>>'s in post replies (TB can't do this!)
+ Ability to disable HTML send/reply completely (TB can sortof do this)
+ Ability to support 8-bit Quoted Printable with no restrictions on line-length; Must soft wrap properly and not mess up hard/soft linebreaks or mess up Quoted Printable formatting from other e-mailers on reply/forward (TB CAN'T do this; OE can... sad sad sad...). Must also display the message properly.
++ Bonus if it can do that AND properly reflow >>>>>>-obsessed replies.
+ PGP/GPG support, with support for encrypting long-line soft-wrapped Quoted Printable text properly without having to add hard line-breaks. (TB can sortof do this?)
+ Option to include text after '-- ' markers instead of automatically deleting them without even asking (TB CAN'T do this; OE can.... is very irritating as I get lots of e-mails that have signatures above top-posted text, and TB ends up deleting the ENTIRE reply thread without asking or options to not do that! )
+ Able to import/export OE mailboxes, EML and MBOX e-mail formats (TB can import OE via the Windows version, and can import/export MBOX and EML via an extension)

<rant>
It's annoying because EnigMail and the other extensions I use are great! It's just that you can't apparently alter the base functionality of TB, and all my requests for options to let ME decide how things should be handled get thrown back on the grounds that the way they do things is the 'Standard' way.
Well, standards are all well and good, but not at the expense of usability! By all means TB should generate standards-compliant e-mails, but it should be able to handle common non-standard quirks, or let me tell it how to handle non-standard quirks to my liking!

[Pse]

You should probably post this somewhere else, like the Desktop Environments, Networking and Security or even Other Things Gentoo subforums...
I just stick to webmail, so I don't know many mail clients, but I've heard Sylpheed is worth checking. Not sure if it's what you're looking for, though

[EDIT]

Flexible cooperation with external commands

You can call external commands and cooperate with them in various circumstance. The Action feature can be used as a filter by passing the currently selected messages to external commands. You can use external editors in the message composition. You can also utilize external commands for the filtering on receiving messages.

If the receiving feature of Sylpheed is not enough, you can even use fetchmail and/or procmail, or external commands (such as inc, imget) for receiving.

It seems this feature might prove useful for some of your requirements, especially if you feel comfortable with the command line =)

[kernelOfTruth]

you tried out evolution ?

http://www.gnome.org/projects/evolution/

[Cyker]

I was going to post it there, but whenever I put stuff like this in where I think it should go, the mods just move it here or some other off-topic forum so I figure "Why bother?" and just dump most of my posts in here unless they unquestionably go into one of the other forums

Sorry, didn't mean to go into rant mode... Sylpheed looks like its worth a try, thanks!

Evolution looks like the GNOME equivalent of Kontact/KMail... might be too bloaty for me. (It also pulls in far too many dependencies for me to test it (96MB!! ) so I'm going to need to install demerge or something before I can try it! )

[mark_alec]

Moved from Unsupported Software to Desktop Environments. There is nothing about email clients that makes this topic suitable for US, thus I moved it.

[bunder]

sylpheed works great for me on my low-end laptop.

[karnesky]

It was alright at first, but as I run into more and more quirks, I'm getting sick of its lack of configurability (The fact that its content handling configurability is worse than OE's is just SAD ) and want out, but I don't know what else to try.

How's that? You can let your desktop environment choose what to do with files or can override it with mimetypes.rdf. Unlike OE, it properly handles PGP-MIME. The only thing I think OE does which TB doesn't is handle MS-TNEF MIME attachments.

I thought all the extensions would make it supremely configurable, but they tend to only add behaviour rather than let you change behaviours.

Care to elaborate on this point too?

+ Ability to disable the goddamned >>>>>>>>>'s in post replies (TB can't do this!)

Many of your gripes seem to be about the TB editor. You can edit posts in an external editor.

+ Ability to disable HTML send/reply completely (TB can sortof do this)

What do you mean "sort of?"

+ Ability to support 8-bit Quoted Printable with no restrictions on line-length; Must soft wrap properly and not mess up hard/soft linebreaks or mess up Quoted Printable formatting from other e-mailers on reply/forward (TB CAN'T do this; OE can... sad sad sad...). Must also display the message properly.

format=flowed

Able to import/export OE mailboxes, EML and MBOX e-mail formats

As with the editor, this might be best accomplished with an external too, regardless of which client you choose.