Another pro-(al)pine rant!
John Mayson
killing me is email. I use GMail IMAP and have well over 4 GB in my
account. The default email client is hardly worth mentioning. It doesn't
see any folder other than INBOX for any IMAP service. There are two
other GUI clients out there and both choke horribly on my GMail account so
they're unusable. Meanwhile Alpine 1.00 just hums right along.
Sigh....
No point, I'm just frustrated that seemingly no one can make a decent mail
client other than UW. :-)
--
John Mayson <jo...@mayson.us>
Austin, Texas, USA // Sent from a Nokia N810
Mark Crispin
> Last month I bought a Nokia N810 Internet Tablet.
Congratulations.
I have an N800, and I use Alpine on it all the time. However, note that I
I did not upgrade it to IT OS 2008 and (since I have the Japanese
environment installed) my onscreen keyboard is uim instead of the standard
Nokia one. xterm on IT OS 2008 has fewer screen lines and the standard
Nokia onscreen keyboard is suboptimal for Alpine use.
Because it has a physical keyboard, the N810 is probably better than the
N800 for Alpine for most users unless you use an external Bluetooth
keyboard.
> No point, I'm just frustrated that seemingly no one can make a decent mail
> client other than UW. :-)
:-)
IMHO, the difference is that Alpine is primarily oriented at handling huge
volumes of mail as efficiently as possible; whereas most other programs
are focused at presenting a particular user experience, without regard for
whether it is efficient or can handle large volumes.
I like making jaws drop by showing Alpine on the N800 open (and thread!) a
55,000 message mailbox in a matter of seconds, all the while emphasizing
that nothing is kept stored on the N800. I first did this after some
clown claimed that IMAP can not work well on mobile devices with more than
a couple of hundred messages.
If you want to open godzilla mailboxes and thread them on a regular basis
on your N800, you ought to get the binaries from
http://staff.washington.edu/mrc/N800/alpine-new.tar.gz
which are based on our current development sources. We fixed a
performance bug in threading that showed up on slower platforms such as
N800.
-- Mark --
http://staff.washington.edu/mrc
Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate.
Si vis pacem, para bellum.
John Mayson
> On Mon, 11 Feb 2008, John Mayson posted:
>> Last month I bought a Nokia N810 Internet Tablet.
>
> Congratulations.
>
> I have an N800, and I use Alpine on it all the time. However, note that I I
> did not upgrade it to IT OS 2008 and (since I have the Japanese environment
> installed) my onscreen keyboard is uim instead of the standard Nokia one.
> xterm on IT OS 2008 has fewer screen lines and the standard Nokia onscreen
> keyboard is suboptimal for Alpine use.
Yeah, I couldn't imagine using the N800 with Alpine and the on-screen
keyboard. It's bad enough with the slide-out keyboard. I don't mean
performance, but rather screen size.
> Because it has a physical keyboard, the N810 is probably better than the N800
> for Alpine for most users unless you use an external Bluetooth keyboard.
I had a Bluetooth keyboard picked out on Amazon.com, but after I got the
N810 I found the built-in one so easy to use I decided against the BT
keyboard.
>> No point, I'm just frustrated that seemingly no one can make a decent mail
>> client other than UW. :-)
>
> :-)
>
> IMHO, the difference is that Alpine is primarily oriented at handling huge
> volumes of mail as efficiently as possible; whereas most other programs are
> focused at presenting a particular user experience, without regard for
> whether it is efficient or can handle large volumes.
That's probably the case. I'm the type who will open a shell window (be
it Windows, Linux, Unix, or Mac OS X) to get some work done, I do the same
with my email. I'll use Apple Mail or Outlook 2003 when I'm being lazy,
but when I need to move a bunch of messages, (Al)pine is my only choice.
> I like making jaws drop by showing Alpine on the N800 open (and thread!) a
> 55,000 message mailbox in a matter of seconds, all the while emphasizing that
> nothing is kept stored on the N800. I first did this after some clown
> claimed that IMAP can not work well on mobile devices with more than a couple
> of hundred messages.
I did wonder just how it'd work and my jaw dropped.
> If you want to open godzilla mailboxes and thread them on a regular basis on
> your N800, you ought to get the binaries from
> http://staff.washington.edu/mrc/N800/alpine-new.tar.gz
> which are based on our current development sources. We fixed a performance
> bug in threading that showed up on slower platforms such as N800.
Thanks. I'm not sure where I got my binary (it's bookmarked, but it
wasn't UW). I compile my own on Mac OS X, but I haven't bothered with an
SDK for the Nokia Internet Tablets.
I know I've said it before. I've used every email client known to man
since I've been online, and I keep coming back to Pine. Thankfully she's
not a jealous spouse. :-P
Mark Crispin
> Yeah, I couldn't imagine using the N800 with Alpine and the on-screen
> keyboard. It's bad enough with the slide-out keyboard. I don't mean
> performance, but rather screen size.
Alpine on the N800 is quite usable with the IT OS 2007 version of xterm
and the uim on-screen keyboard (installed as part of the CJK package when
you select Japanese).
With the key menu suppressed, I get 11 visible messages in the index in
normal mode, and 16 visible messages in full screen mode, both with the
on-screen keyboard visible. With the on-screen keyboard closed, I get 21
visible messages in the index in normal mode, and 26 message in
full-screen mode.
More importantly, the uim on-screen keyboard has a CTRL key.
Since I installed the CJK package immediately after I got my N800, I
wasn't even aware that I was not using the standard on-screen keyboard. I
just coincidentally picked what worked best for Alpine.
> I know I've said it before. I've used every email client known to man since
> I've been online, and I keep coming back to Pine. Thankfully she's not a
> jealous spouse. :-P
The lady knows that she's the best... ;-)
-- Mark --
http://panda.com/mrc
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what to eat for lunch.
Liberty is a well-armed sheep contesting the vote.