Karmic Spec: Thunderbird Vs. Claws

[Simon Steinbeiß]

On Tue, 19 May 2009 12:00:44 +0100
xubuntu-devel-request at lists.ubuntu.com wrote:

> I have too, am using Claws, with all the plugins... 
> its DOES use less memory... however, it could use,
> a update in.
> 
> 1. HTML, have it built-in into the app, for sending and receiving,
> in html format.

It doesn't have a WYSIWYG editor, but you could use an external editor for that (there is
even a button for that). With reading html-emails I've never had a problem.
Actually I like the way Claws handles that now (maybe it's because I rarely/never compose
messages in html).

> 
> 2. have the application 100% multi-threaded...(even the plugins)
> 
> 3. have it take advantage of multi-cpu's 

That kinda goes to point 7, I'd say. And there definitely have been improvements on that
front lately (e.g. the expanding/collapsing of threads in your inbox has been
dramatically improved performance-wise). Actually I don't see such a big need for
speeding it up even more, it's already really responsive.

> 4. have a import and export fuction, that can import from All clients, 
> and export to All clients... ( or 99.9% ) of them.
>
> 5. That includes, address books.

4 and 5 could be jobs for one or more plugins.

> 6. have custom view, where you can add more fields to the columns to
> display more info.. (if you have a larger monitor ) 24"

You can already do that, go to View>Set displayed Colums>In message list
(If that's not enough, try the other layouts, especially Three Columns could be nice for
a monitor of that size.)

> 7. make it faster
> 
> 8. build-in mail server checker... to see if you mail server is having
> problems... (aka gmail) 

Don't really see what you mean by that. There's already a network log that displays
problems with the mailserver when they occur. There's even a notification icon in the
lower left corner if problems are encountered with sending/receiving.

> 9. MH format is okay, mbox is good... have the ability to have more
> than one type of storage format.

There's already the possibility to use mbox with claws. Just install the
claws-mail-mailmbox-plugin.
I don't see much point in using more than two storage formats.

> 10. a small SQL backend database, might be a nice way to go,
> kinda like dbmail, but all together in one application.

What for? (searching? indexing?)

> 
> Regards -
> Rick

Regarding the features that aren't there yet and the parts where Claws can use
improvement I recommend using their bugtracker
(http://thewildbeast.co.uk/claws-mail/bugzilla/) or their mailinglist
(http://www.claws-mail.org/MLs.php).

Since this was/is a discussion about whether Thunderbird or Claws is going to be the
default mailclient for Xubuntu Karmic: were your 10 points in any way related to that?
(Just asking cause I don't see the connection, not trying to be rude.)

Simon