[vox-tech] Kmail Question

[Jeffrey J. Nonken]

On Mon, 14 Nov 2005 14:16:57 -0800, Micah J. Cowan wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 14, 2005 at 03:32:47PM -0600, Jay Strauss wrote:
> 
>> You should try Thunderbird. It kinda sucks too :)
>> 
> It's what I've switched back to. It has its problems, but it's my
> favorite thus far.
> 

I looked over a bunch of email programs in FreeBSD ports. The only 
three that seemed to have one of my main requirements -- threading -- 
were Thunderbird, GnuMail, and Sylpheed-Claws, and I couldn't get 
GnuMail to work at all. So I compared the other two and showed my wife 
what I'd found.

The biggest gripe we both had about Thunderbird was the fact that we 
couldn't do a mark/reply; reply would always include the entire 
message. Sylpheed-Claws will quote only the marked text.

I also couldn't get Thunderbird to toss email for specific accounts 
into specific default folders (I had to create a filter for each one). 
It's possible that I just didn't understand how to do it, but it 
should have been obvious. Sylpheed did that nicely and easily.

My two biggest gripes about Sypheed were: 

1) I had to set up a separate smtp server for each account; 
Thunderbird lets you set up a default server, and override it on a 
per-account basis. That's particularly nice if you're, say, on a 
laptop that you may use at hotspots where you need to easily change 
the server you're using. My ISP blocks port 25, so I have to use their 
server when I'm home, but if I'm at the local hangout I have to use my 
hosted domain server. 

2) When I went to do a reply of a message that came in on an account 
that's not my primary, Sylpheed-Claws replied using my primary account 
by default. Thunderbird (and PocoMail and Eudora) will reply using the 
account it came in on. However that is much mitigated because I can 
override the primary account on a per-mailbox basis (and there's an 
option to include sub-mailboxes). Since I'm tossing those accounts to 
different places anyway, it's not a show-stopper.

Sylpheed-Claws also has a "reply to sender" button that's great for 
private replies to people on mailing lists.

Blanche and I both decided that the inability to mark/quote was a 
show-stopper. She is now happily using Sylpheed-Claws on her Linux 
machine. I'm still using Windows on my primary machine, I'm still not 
ready to migrate this system to FreeBSD. To complicate matters, I may 
be getting a PowerBook in the next couple days, at which point I'll be 
examining OS X offerings, as I expect I'll keep my email there.