PGP problems

[Steve Lamb]

On Wed, Aug 02, 2000 at 06:06:25PM +0100, Brian Morrison wrote:
> It's getting towards decision time too in some ways Steve. I think I
> like the look of some of the Evolution tools on Helix Gnome, although
> why they make it look like Outcast I don't know. There is a nice GUI
> newsreader too, called PAN.

    I'm not to keen on anything that is GUI on Linux right now.  Even
Evolution doesn't have the per account settings like PMMail and TB!.  For me I
am waiting for Borland to complete the port of Delphi over to Linux.  Ritlabs
has publicly stated that TB! will be ported to Linux when Delphi for Linux
comes out.  While I am not 100% happy with TB! it is quite comparable to
PMMail and has active development.  In fact, they finally got cluster selects
to work.  Woo!

    The only other alternative is to roll my own which, oddly enough, I have
been considering.  I'd piss off a lot of people to do it, though.  I had
originally thought about programming it in Perl as a proof-of-concept of what
I feel an email client should be.  At the time I only knew Perl well enough to
write anything decent.  Recently I've been dabbling in, and falling in love
with, Python.  I am seriously considering programming it in Python with either
a CLI or use Tinker to have a TK front end.  Downside is that Python is not as
fast as Perl or C is.  OTOH it has loads of standard libraries that make the
conceptual phase a breeze compared to Perl.  It has libraries to read the
standard mailbox formats, parse RFC822 headers, do MIME, connect to SMTP
servers and so on.  

    Right now I've been working on porting my dice server from Perl to Python
and while some of Python is nailing me, I think I've fallen well into the
language and am making amazing headway.  The more I work on it, the more
progress I make in understanding the language, the more I think I /can/ write
an MUA in Python.  That, I think, is the largest stumbling block.  Convincing
oneself it is possible to do something.
 
> The prospect of new releases of GnuPG and also the prospect of having
> IPv6 for encrypted comms in general when it is available seems very
> nice. 

    GPG has been moving along nicely.  Still needs a Windows version and
support on that platform, however.

> holes through which others can peer. OS/2 and PMMail has been a great
> ride but I think I'll need to seriously get them running in parallel
> soon so that I can ensure that I can do everything under Linux.

    Honestly it isn't that horrible.  I made the decision to drop OS/2 in
favor of Linux when I realized the only reason I had OS/2 installed was
PMMail/2 (pre PMMail97 beta).  Now I run a hybrid.  Windows for games, TB!,
Quicken (mostly) and my Linux box for everything else.  I figure between those
two I have most things covered.
 
> The silence over PMMail from BSW is just getting too long, it is
> somewhere near six months now and nothing has been hinted at let alone
> committed to.

    That is something that each person has to decide on their own.  Some
people have rightfully pointed out that if PMMail works fine now there isn't
really a compelling reason to worry.  I tend to agree.  I mean, I am running a
2.2 kernel on my box that is quite a bit old.  OTOH I also take some measure
of pride(?) in my uptimes on my Linux box which prevents me from upgrading to
the latest at a moment's notice.  If there are major security holes in the one
I have I'll upgrade, otherwise, eh, it works.  And that is the kernel.

    If anyone is thinking of looking at other mail clients on Windows, give
TB! a look-see.  The interface takes a while to get used to but once you do
get used to it it runs nicely.  I won't say "like a dream" or any other such
terms since I do see a lot of room for improvement on the interface, but what
TB! lacks in polish it makes up in power.
 
-- 
         Steve C. Lamb         | I'm your priest, I'm your shrink, I'm your
         ICQ: 5107343          | main connection to the switchboard of souls.
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