Minimal skills

[Polytropon]

On Fri, 5 Jun 2020 07:56:53 +0200, Ralf Mardorf via freebsd-questions wrote:
> On Fri, 5 Jun 2020 00:33:08 +0200, Polytropon wrote:
> >If you have IMAP support, you can even try / use multiple MUAs and
> >see what works best for you, without requiring to have multiple
> >mail accounts and program-individual local mailboxes.
> 
> I share my POP accounts with different MUAs. All, excepted of one MUA
> leave the mails on the server. On my desktop PC I store 100,000th
> of mails duplicated by two MUAs. It's not an issue related to disk
> space. On my iPads I delete the mails. It isn't really much work to set
> up several MUAs, even when being in favour of POP.

The problem is not duplicate files, the problem _might_ be
that, in case of IMAP, you want to mark messages as read or
delete them in _one_ client, and all other clients should
"update" the status accordingly (so you don't see all messages
as "new message" in all the other clients even though you
have read and deleted the message in one client already).

IMAP + several clients means one centralized "repository"
of messages (on the server), and with sychronized local
storage you can get rid of duplicate files, if that should
be a problem. It's technically possible to do this with
POP3 / SMTP as well. One hypothetical obstruction could
be a storage limit on the server ("You cannot receive new
messages, your mailbox is full!").



> FWIW nowadays I'm using Claws and Evolution as my main MUAs, but I also
> run Sylpheed and the iPad pseudo-MUA.
> 
> Claws issue is the "> ", this results in "> > ", while it should become
> ">> ", so for Claws I'm using ">".

Yes, there is a difference between those quoting characters. :-)



> I'm not using HTML. If for some reason HTML is wanted, I recommend to
> test Evolution.

Thunderbird and Sylpheed can generate HTML if needed, but
why would somebody _want_ that?



> Apart from blind users who read Braille, I can't understand why users
> are in favour of text-based MUAs such a Mutt, Alpine, Wanderlust
> etc..

Simplicity, the ability to script, and access via SSH might
be good reasons. Furthermore, the option to automate things
is often easier with TUI (or real CLI) MUAs than trying to
do this with GUI MUAs. However, for regular use, I personally
prefer a GUI MUA, but thanks to the ability of choice, every
user can select and change the MUAs he wants to use.



-- 
Polytropon
Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...