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Mailpile [Beta]

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Masonjar13:
It's generally considered good form to include a link to what you're talking about.
-Deozaan (November 09, 2014, 11:58 PM)
--- End quote ---
I thought about it, but based off previous experiences, most just search for it anyway. Here's the link:
Mailpile

Typical email providers, like Outlook (hotmail), gmail, yahoo (do people still use that?), etc. are server based, that is, everything is stored on a server and accessible via a browser. Outlook does have a local-side client, but it's got it's own gui I think. Mailpile has a web-coded interface without it's own window, so it opens up in your browser. The best thing about Mailpile is: you don't have to put it through a browser. It's all open-source, mostly written in python, so you could just as easily implement a window to throw all the web-code into. Keep in mind, this is just the beta, so they may very well have plans to do that themselves.

As it is now, Mailpile supports SMTP and IMAP. They're working on implementing POP3, Tor, and SMTorPSend. Looks like it imports from most big e-mail providers, but I've only tested hotmail, which works fine, albeit very slow (took about 16-20 hours for 710 messages).

Deozaan:
I'm confused. The features make it sound like an email server. But they say repeatedly that it's just an email client. I guess I need to research a bit more on how email works behind the scenes.

So it's an email client... that I run on my computer... that has a web-server... that I can connect to from anywhere (as long as my PC is running/connected/reachable)?

But I'd still need to use e.g., Google's SMTP servers to send and receive mail?

I think I like it. I've downloaded it. I'll install it and see how it goes.

tomos:
I had a look at the demo. It reminds me of gmail - it also appears to have the limitations of gmail:


* I can only look at twenty mails at a time - this may be expandable to 50 or more? (I would still find this a limitation)
* sorting does not appear to be possible (?)
I tend to use sort and scroll a lot when working with emails (using Thunderbird). Why I never used gmail much in the browser - although I like their new way of sorting the inbox a lot (different tabs for 'Social' 'Promotions' etc.), and often use of late it when first checking new mail.

Deozaan:
Quote from the Known Issues part of the release notes (emphasis added):

IMAP

* There may be noticable delays between when a message is downloaded and when it appears in UI
* Does not yet recognize whether messages are "new" or already read (so all are marked as new)
* Can not yet delete from server or otherwise synchronize local changes
* Non-ASCII characters in folder names are not properly decoded
* Support for STARTTLS is missing-https://github.com/pagekite/Mailpile/wiki/Release-Notes-201409-Beta
--- End quote ---

Having all messages marked as new is annoying, but can be dealt with. But being unable to synchronize any local changes basically makes MailPile read-only as far as organizing your mail goes.  Can't delete or mark as spam or archive or sort into any various folder/tags and have your changes saved on the server. So it's kind of worthless for reading Gmail right now. And since POP3 doesn't work at all, IMAP with the above limitations is the best you get for now.

I really like the idea of MailPile and I'm looking forward to it being developed a bit more fully. It looks really cool. I'd really like to use it.

One question I have that I can't find the answer to is this, there's an option to Download mail from the Server or Do Not Download. I'm not sure what this does. I thought IMAP left the mail on the server so it can be accessed (quickly) from multiple devices/locations. Whereas POP3 downloaded the mail from the server so that only the device that connected to the server would get the mail.

Is this a fundamental misunderstanding on my part? Can IMAP also remove mail from the server like POP3 traditionally did/does? Would that make it look like it was erased/deleted from my Gmail account? Would that then allow me to use my MailPile client as a "server" which I can access from multiple devices/sources?

Masonjar13:
So it's an email client... than I run on my computer... that has a web-server... that I can connect to from anywhere (as long as my PC is running/connected/reachable)?
-Deozaan (November 10, 2014, 01:53 PM)
--- End quote ---

Mailpile does not have a web-server. They don't own any servers. Using servers is completely optional and only available if you sync an account from a service that has servers, like Gmail.

I really resent the limitations of how many can be displayed as well, but it's still in beta, so I have hope they'll change it, or add more options for it. Stuff can be sorted though, it uses "tags", which are like folders, but with a lot more functionality. It's all a little finicky right now, but you can search by tags to find things, and everything can have as many tags as you want. What I'm really complaining about though is that that you can't have the tag listed under a parent tag and as a top-level tag, meaning, I can't have it under my "Outlook" tag, which holds everything from my hotmail, and also have it listed on the left bar as a top-level. At the very least, it should show tags by hierarchy on the left, so I can get where I need to much faster.

Can IMAP also remove mail from the server like POP3 traditionally did/does? Would that make it look like it was erased/deleted from my Gmail account?
-Deozaan (November 10, 2014, 06:37 PM)
--- End quote ---

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Message_Access_ProtocolIMAP2bis
With the advent of MIME, IMAP2 was extended to support MIME body structures and add mailbox management functionality (create, delete, rename, message upload) that was absent from IMAP2.
-Wikipedia
--- End quote ---
This then carried over to IMAP4, which is the current implement. Now, this could be just referencing the local structure, but I'm not really sure.

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