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Cross Platform Email Client? 43

Posted by Cliff from the we-DO-have-multi-OS-networks-remember? dept.
AndrewRF asks: "I was wondering whether there was a good cross-platform email client that shares a common format for local mail, preferences, address book, filters, etc. files. I split time between a Win32 environment and Linux and collect mail from 3 different POP servers. I frequently find myself needing to boot out of Linux to retrieve a message downloaded by my Windows mail client that is stored in some non-accessible format. I've tried leaving the messages on the mail servers, but it's not as seamless as I would like. What I would really like would be have both platforms share a single, common set of local files. I've looked around, but haven't found anything that does the trick. I suspect that I could do this with Pine, though I'm ideally looking for something more GUIish. " To my knowledge, there is no such animal, although I wonder if there is a way to do this using external tools and scripts on both ends. Your thoughts?
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Cross Platform Email Client? More

Cross Platform Email Client?

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  • I didn't know that Mutt was SO close to Elm !

    As you say, the opening display is not so good, kinda scrunched up to the top of the screen, but there has to be SOME way to fix it !

  • When I try to export messages from OE5, it is complaining that MAPI isn't installed. I don't really feel like downloading Outlook or MS Mail, any other solutions?
  • All Windows installations come with Exchange Inbox (Win95) or Windows Messaging (Win95b/98). If it is not already installed it can be installed from the CD.;

    Exchange Inbox/Windows Messaging and their commercial clients, Exchange 4/5 Outlook97/98/2000 all use the same file format .PST.

  • Joe Barr wrote this article [linuxworld.com] for LinuxWorld concerning moving from Windows to Linux.

    Joe converted from Eudora to KMail simply by copying the Eudora mail files to his unix partition and pointing KMail at them. I would imaging sharing the mail database would work quite well.

    Hope this helps.
    ------------------------------------------ -------------

  • Does anyone know of a script that converts Outlook Express mail folders/messages to formats readable by PINE, etc. I saw one once but it didn't work with the latest version of OE.
  • I had a similar problem, since imho netscapes mail client bites I chose to go w/ a browser based approach. [atdot.org]. Its similar to hotmail, but you can run it on your own box, and it can poll pop3 accounts.
  • I have a dual-boot system at my house that runs Windows 95 and Linux. My wife uses Windows, and I avoid whenever I can; sometimes, however, she's using the machine and I need to check an email. I use Netscape's Messenger client, since it is cross platform, and I get around the multiple copies thing by mounting my FAT partition as /windows, and nfs-mounting the Communicator mail directory under my home directory on Linux (so /windows/program files/netscape/communicator/users/darren/mail maps to /home/darren/nsmail).

    Crude, but effective.

    darrem

  • noop == mnemonic assembler comand for no operation. When it recieves a noop command, the CPU just sits idle for one clock then goes on to the next instruction. Why the IMAP protocol bothers to implement a noop instruction is beyond me, though...
  • I have run into this annoying problem myself a lot. IMHO it is seriously broken that email programs, calendar apps, address books and so on take the user's info and encode it into some form that is not useable outside (exceptions for standard unix email format) the proprietary program that first touched and "managed" the information. What I plan to hack on some day RSN is representing this info in a non-proprietary format as XML with code to go from/to various proprietary formats. Eventually GUI minded folk can write these tools that take the XML as their native format.

  • I support Netscape daily, and it's mostly identical across all platforms. You can likely point your paths in your Linux installation to a mounted vfat drive. It's something I should have tried (but I avoid using doze). One drawback is Netscape 4.6x didn't support multiple pop boxes within one configuration. I'm worthless, I haven't used 4.7 yet. Does it?
  • If you file a message by dragging the header, it markes the old message to be deleted, but will not delete them upon a purge. Outlook Exp. 4 used semicolons to separate recipients. Bad voodoo in that gatesware. Keep away. Use MUTT.
  • I believe there was a slashdotted article a couple of months back about a HP product called Openlook as an outlook replacement, they were doing free trials to get feedback until they released it comercialy. IIRC it was to run under Linux and HP-UX.
  • While on this subject, does anyone know of an exchange client for linux (with access to public folders and forms etc.) it's the one thing thats stopping me changing this computer to linux at work :(.

  • IMAP (Score:2)

    by cr0nj0b ( 20813 )
    I don't know if this will help you, but what about using IMAP on the server end to store your messages. If you really need the address book and everything you could try TWIG (web-based email). If you go over to freshmeat.net and do a search for twig, they will give you the web page.

    I dont know if that helps you. It might be a little off-topic (since you asked for a client), but using IMAP is the solution I use. I also use procmail to sort my mail into folders on the server.
  • Here's what I do...

    I use Windows NT at work and for personal mail, I am using Outlook Express and have the following settings turned "on":

    Leave a copy of message on server

    Remove from server when deleting from "Deleted Items"

    This way I can keep up with messages during the day. If there's a message I want to read later on at home, I can either mark it as "unread" or *not* delete it from my "Deleted Items" folder. When I go home and check mail, it shows up as a new message.

    I don't know if this helps, but it's an idea. As for your mail clients, Netscape's mail client has similar settings (I think). I have Netscape's browser-only here at work.

    On a side note, though somewhat related, I accidently left Outlook Express open at work. It was checking for mail every 15 minutes or so. When I was at home getting mail, NONE of them were showing up as "N" in Mutt!! I checked and double-checked my settings in .muttrc many times trying to figure that out! Since they'd already be retrieved, but not removed from my mail server, they were not considered "New".

  • Well, I did forget one thing...

    Netscape can only fetch mail from (1) POP server. Hmmm, set up fetchmail on the *Nix box and then set Netscape up to read local mail. There, will that do it ??

    Dare I say it, Outlook Express supports multiple POP servers. Why doesn't Netscape ?? Will Mozilla ??

  • elm ? (Score:1)

    by euroderf ( 47 )
    I like elm a lot, and it's in source code form, and it's been around forever, so I'm sure it's plenty cross-platform.

    I'm posting to ask if anyone has any pointer to any "authoritative" elm sites ? Elm development seems to be badly fragmented, and things like MIME support and PGP support are kind of hit-or-miss.

  • i feel like a traitor using it, but...

    I've found Outlook Express that comes with IE5.0 is a really nice client. I can have it pull mail from several different POP3 accounts. When replying it has the ability to let you choose what email you're sending from (unlike in Netscape which makes you change it, close, restart) on the fly. You can also set it up so that any email aliases you have are also included in the From list, but can set it so they aren't checked for mail. I like it, even if it is M$...

    I know it won't work under different OS's, but if you have one station that always runs win9x/NT, you can use it on there.
  • I very highly recommend the email client in Netscape Communicator for the purpose you've described. In the sense of being cross-platform it works very similarly between linux/XWindows and Microsoft's two main windowing products.

    I started using it way-back-when because out of the box it could handle HTML. There is a ton about it that I don't like, so every six months or so I get frustrated about something and go look at the others, but I always conclude that this one sucks less than eudora, less than outlook, less than outlook express, less than postilion, less than emacs... I think that's what I've looked at.

    I've done the interesting cross-platform things like copy the mailfolders, address books, bookmarks, etc. back and forth and it has worked well whenever I've done it. YMMV because "they" do have a tendency to keep changing the way it works and one never knows when they'll break it.

    I've used it in POP3, POP3 "leave on server" and IMAP modes. I would recomment IMAP if your server has it available. It can be confusing to configure (no, I don't want to treat all of my .dotfiles as mailfolders, why are you asking?), but once you get it to work it works the same every day after that.

    Perhaps if I get time I'll post more about how I configure it and how I wish I could configure it. One final note: the very latest version silently turned off Emacs-keys but the release notes did mention it and I was able to get them back by ditching the new /usr/X11/blahblahblah/Netscape appdefaults.

  • Use IMAP. The best support for IMAP is provided by Outlook Express on Windows (Not outlook; it cannot store sent messages on the server), and, of course, twig [screwdriver.net], and IMP [horde.org].

    I tried netscape on Unix, but it crashes when I use it with IMAP. Also, IMAP is way better than POP, even when POP supports leaving the mail on the server.

    I heard that vm on emacs support IMAP, and so does mutt. I haven't tried them though.
  • Communicator mail format is a standard unixspool file; you can transparently use the files from both Windows and Linux - caveat, I don't think the indexes are, though.

    I used to keep my mail shared and do this before I finally kicked the Windows habit alltogether. :)

    -te
  • Are you on crack?

    The version of Outlook Express that I tested created a .mailboxlist file on the server--very non-standard. The version of Express that came with Office 2000 Beta (I HOPE it's better in the released version) did an IMAP NOOP when you asked it to refresh the headers! A NOOP! And to top it all off, Express only keeps the header information locally that you have set up in your "columns" (sent date, received date, sender, etc.), so if you decide to start sorting by, let's say, received date, but didn't originally have it as a column, you have to REFRESH ALL YOUR HEADERS since it never kept the full header. And since refreshing the headers doesn't work (see NOOP above), you have to redownload all of your email, including message bodies.

    Your Netscape is crashing on Unix due to library inconsistencies. Fix your Unix box (which really sounds like a Linux box--not the same thing) and use Communicator. IMAP is definitely the way, but MS needs to get their act together.
  • I've been using Netscape in both Windoze and Linux for about 6 months now and it works great. I was using Netscape in Windoze when I finally got a large enough hard drive to give some space to Linux (I'd get rid of windoze if it weren't for the wife). You just have to make sure you set up Netscape under Linux to read from the correct directory. I also have it set up so I can check my e-mail whether I'm logged in as root or my standard username. The only real problem with Netscape is that it only allows a connection to one POP server. To use multiple servers you must use IMAP.
  • I thought NOOP (or NOP) was commonly included in protocols because it's sometimes useful, notably in the debugging phase. It does nothing but you (presumably) get an OK response, so you know the server is working and your commands are being received and processed.

    I find it very unlikely that a protocol NOOP command actually executes the NOOP CPU instruction.
  • I had the same problem and I think I have it solved. I have a little Linux box at home that runs IPChains and so forth. I set it up to use fetchmail to collect mail from different accounts, then I use an IMAP client on my workstation to read the messages. On Linux I use Netscape, on Windows NT I use Outlook 2000. Seems to work pretty well and I don't have to worry about losing mail messages if I decide to re-install NT!
  • I think that I do remember Pine being multi-platform. Check it out: http://www.washington.edu/pine, *NIX and DOS/Windows ports
  • I haven't tried the Windows Exchange client in WINE but you might want to look for their DOS (Exchange 4) client. I tried to get it to work in DOSEMU but I didn't know how to set up the network driver so I never got it to work. If you look around on the MS FTP site you should be able to find their old DOS MS Networks client (Not LanMan). Exchange requires the MS client because it communicates with the sever using RPC. There might also be a Win3.1 client, I didn't look. They still produce Win3.1 clients for much of their other software (IE5, Media Player 6.1, etc.)
  • What's a noop?

    So which IMAP client do you suggest for Windows?

    Thanks,
    ccg
  • The origional poster was talking about "Outlook Express" not Outlook, confusing, no. As you know the old Outlook Express 4 and earlier used text files to store the messages, not exactally RFC standard but workable. OE5 apparently uses a binary format. I have had some success in converting OE5 email into Windows Messaging .PST format, and then using Communicator or an older version of OE to convert this into a text file. Try it and see.
  • J Street Mailer [yahoo.com] is a 100% Pure Java application. It's now available for free.
  • A few weeks ago I got frustrated and downloaded and installed as many mail clients as I could find. I posted the results at
  • Why would you prefer a GUI mail client? After trying out various GUI client I wound up going back to PINE myself. One big advantage of the non-GUI is the ease of scrolling through text. Hitting the spacebar is a lot easier than keeping that pointer in the scrollbar area and dragging/clicking/wheeling up and down.

    Plus I like the ease of archiving mail in Pine using Mbox format boxes and just BZipping them and moving them off-line as I see fit.

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