[GTALUG] alternatives to gmail working well in Ubintu?

[Howard Gibson]

On Thu, 14 Nov 2019 22:00:43 -0500 (EST)
Karen Lewellen via talk <talk at gtalug.org> wrote:

> Hi folks,
> I was going to just ask for alternatives to consider, but want to keep the 
> Linux element here as I mainly use a Ubuntu shell.
> Now that google is making it  profoundly difficult reaching basic html in 
> low graphics environments, I may need a new home.  I prefer reading on the 
> web for this account, especially as I use it largely for research needing 
> to follow article links and work with file attachments.
> Any solid ideas?
> Thanks,
> Karen

Karen,

   Are you looking for email that runs in a shell?

   reaching = reading?

   I use the email client Sylpheed, which runs in a window, i.e. not in a shell.  It happily downloads gmail through POP.  Sylpheed generates email in plain text, but it is fairly good at reading email generated in HTML.  I have at least one contact who sends stuff in Microsoft TNEF format.  I save this in a temporary directory and use the command tnef (/usr/bin/tnef) to extract it.  I originally installed Sylpheed because it worked well offline.  Back in the days before wireless, this was absolutely necessary.  This still comes in handy.  The send-later feature is also useful for those emails that require twenty four hours cooling time before sending.  Sylpheed uses mh (mail handler) format, rather than the more popular mbox format.  I think I would prefer mbox, but mh is extremely robust.  Sylpheed links nicely to your browser, and you can see those wierd HTML anchors correctly down at the bottom of the screen, e.g.

   <a href="http://www.cibc.iamafuckingasshole.biz">http://www.cibc.ca</a>

   If you must use a shell, I am pretty sure Alpine will download gmail through POP.  I have not used it lately.  I do not know how it handles HTML code, and HTTP links.

-- 
Howard Gibson 
hgibson at eol.ca
jhowardgibson at gmail.com
http://home.eol.ca/~hgibson