I don't know how sylpheed made it to HN, but just wanted to point out: They don't have any active development and don't do security fixes any more.
I found a command parameter injection via links in claws+sylpheed a while back (claws is originally a fork of sylpheed) that was fixed in claws and that I also reported to sylpheed, and it was never fixed (CVE-2021-37746 fwiw).
Honestly "user-friendly" sound a bit bold to my eyes for a reason: we are in 2022... We have search-based things as much as possible, for emails I cite notmuch and mu, mostly used in-Emacs but being independent binaries usable with any UI and actually we have some non-Emacs from Neomutt with notmuch or Astroid with notmuch again.
A modern and user-friendly MUA for me is:
- something with option to eat or sync remote mailboxes over IMAPs
- something with a decent contact management support from vcard to ldap
- something with a big search bar for full-text search + extras (date, attachments, booleans etc)
- something able to tag messages regardless of the maildir structure, still integrated with it (i.e. a tag a directory + extras the user made)
- a usable html crap renderer (sigh)
- selection of easy to add metada fields
- proper format f-f support
Sylpheed/Claws looks like '90s-style MUA witch never be user friendly except for users trained on Window 9.x systems who want something familiar...
While I second most of your points, for me proper navigation and management for the directory tree is way more important than global full-text search, which I can take or leave.
I struggled with the Gmail flow for over a decade until I finally migrated to a self-hosted setup the other year. Finally feel on top of my inbox control for the first time.
It's not about "being stuck in the 90s" (paraphrasing), some minds just prefer hierarchies. Search-based is likewise a subjective preference and not objectively more user-friendly, regardless of how fashionable it is.
That's also valid for me, I auto-refile most of my "recurrent" mails via MailDrop, but most users are piler not filer, and even hardcore filers still need full-text search here and there... Let's say you look for a mail from a friend "a bit of time ago" (no certain date, many messages) about something. You recall some words in it, but your friend is not polite in mail netiquette so subjects are really bad, resorting to FTS is the simplest option. Having tags for casually mark messages with keywords to recall or group them in different ways is also useful because sometimes some messages belong to a certain maildir, but they might be meaningful together with other messages belonging to other maildirs.
Beside that classic IMAP search is HORRENDOUSLY limited and integrated search barely works, we have to deal with html emails, search inside docs attachments, have mails with (sigh) external contents, need full-text search results filtering by date, attachments of a certain kind, size etc etc etc...
We have seen the power of Google Search, we do have FLOSS maildir indexers who give them to us locally... Not having it in 2022 is honestly absurd IMVHO...
Oh waw, that still exists? I remember visiting Yamamoto-san at the Good Day office in Osaka something like 20 years ago, back when I was a Sylpheed user. I don't remember why they accepted the visit from some random French dude during work hours, but that was nice of them. I wonder if I still have the emails...
Not only was it organized via email, but back then, I didn't have email in my pocket. I had to go to Internet cafes to access my email when I was on holiday in Japan. And sometimes it didn't work because my email was on a server in France, and I was in Japan, and Windows 9x was sending packets with a TTL too low for the many hops in between here and there.
BTW, 20 years later, I still have the emails (found them). I just sent something along the lines of "I'm in Japan right now, I'll be in Osaka soon, can I come say hello". And the reply was essentially "Sure, when?". And they sent me pictures afterwards.
This put a huge smile on my face. :- ) A blog post about the whole experience would be very cool. I really enjoy your storytelling, the context is a delight.
I was reading the claws feature list, and saw an example of what must now be regarded as backwards thinking: the data is stored in MH meaning you can export your mail from another client to MH and export your data just as easy.
Their continued dedication to supporting touchscreens as first-class input devices at the expense of a saner UX for the remaining 95% of users blows my mind.
I couldn't agree more, they're getting so bad lately.
I wonder how viable would be to patch GTK3 and 4 libraries so that software using them will retain logical compatibility without recompiling, at least those loading them dynamically, but "normal" windows and widgets will be used instead.
I used Sylpheed/Claws for years but switched to Evolution as it also allowed me to read Usenet when my favourite Usenet client was discontinued. This was about 15 years ago.
I tried to figure out if it supported HTML and ended up searching the issue tracker. It is completely full of spam and should probably be taken offline.
I found a command parameter injection via links in claws+sylpheed a while back (claws is originally a fork of sylpheed) that was fixed in claws and that I also reported to sylpheed, and it was never fixed (CVE-2021-37746 fwiw).