[ale] Evolution is a hog

[Michael B. Trausch]

On Mon, 2007-12-10 at 14:54 -0500, Jim Popovitch wrote:
> Compared to?  (seriously)
> 
> I'm not looking to start a vi/emacs war, but in my experience
> Evolution
> is the fastest app I've seen for email, esp where there are large
> folders of filtered email.   I have one folder that has 15864 emails
> in
> it, yet I can text search all fields in a relatively short time.

While I am not 100% happy with Evolution (then again, I have yet to find
a mail program that really woos me), I have to say that with regard to
searches, it is rather responsive.  It is the least worst of all of the
mail software that I have used.

Maybe, someday, that will change.  I have started to work on something
in my spare time, but all I have at the moment are a couple of
partially-complete libraries implementing various email standards and
the like.  Given that implementing robust software is hard to do, and
that the number of standards that surround email is rather large, I can
understand the complexity of implementing an email program correctly.

And, before its asked; I am not sure that I would be able to contribute
meaningfully to a project such as Evolution (for reasons of design;
things like NNTP were [seemingly] an afterthought in it) or Thunderbird
(the build system is so complex and the software itself is so complex
that I don't know that I could fix any of the bugs that prevent me from
using it), which is why I started something a while back that was
totally written from scratch.  I just wish that I had more time to work
on it.  

The ideal MUA for me would be something that (a) implements IMAP, POP3,
OpenPGP, NNTP, and other relevant standards, (b) is 100% customizable
per-mail-account with no forced bleed from configurations on other
accounts, (c) is tolerant of servers which do not follow standards, (d)
is fast and robust, and (d) uses more efficient storage than any other
existing client.  As far as "more efficient storage" goes, my thoughts
on that are a bit scattered; what I *do* know is that so far, every MUA
I have ever used has subscribed to the ideas of having messages for a
single folder piled into a single file, or using maildir-style boxes,
which slow down considerably depending on the filesystem you are using
when you have thousands and thousands of messages.

	--- Mike

-- 
Michael B. Trausch                                   mike at trausch.us
home: 404-592-5746, 1                                 www.trausch.us
cell: 678-522-7934                       im: mike at trausch.us, jabber
Ubuntu Unofficial Backports Project:    http://backports.trausch.us/
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