I'm working on a new E-mail client for UXP.

[andyprough]

I'm thinking I might actually need to redo the build in an RHEL 7 VM

Sounds like a major hassle. I could spin up an antiX Linux 19 vm in about 2 minutes and build a binary for you that should run on most systems - if you like. Send me the .mozconfig you'd like to run and I'll be happy to do it this evening.

[athenian200]

Sounds like a major hassle.

It kind of is, but it's the standard people are used to. The RHEL based distros apparently tend to be particularly good at generating binaries that work on old versions of Linux, which is why that's the build environment everyone recommends if you are trying to distribute universal Linux binaries. I was able to get Oracle Linux 7 working for some reason, not sure why that one worked and the others didn't. So the Linux binary should work better now, I replaced it and the link is the same as before.

[fatboy]

I am busy testing Epyrus on Antix Linux. Working fine!

At first glance it looks really nice! Good work!

[distantpluto]

Well I've been running up to speed for one day and no obvious problems so far

I copied over my mailboxes and address book (abook.mab, history.mab) from my Interlink profile. I installed my previously mentioned essential extensions, all three of which are working perfectly. I reinstalled my CalDAV calendars, no problem.

As for the UI - well I'm happy with it as it is, after a little rejiggling of the accounts/folders pane using "Manually Sort Folder 1.1.1" and setting up "global inbox" on "Local Folders". I've disabled the Mail toolbar and "customized" a bit. Even my userChrome.css (stripling effect colours and other tweaks) and userContent.css (quote level colouring) that moved with me through TB and then Interlink are working just great. I just need a change of icons and it'll be more or less ideal!

I also changed a couple of prefs so links open in Pale Moon, instead of a tab.

Very happy Thanks.

[Giraffe]

Will you be releasing a 32-bit version that'll run on Windows 7, please?

https://1drv.ms/u/s!AsscXELhr-eyh70g-ZO ... Q?e=mnRwz6

Sorry, I forgot about 32-bit. I thought most Windows installs these days were 64-bit, but I guess some people still need to run 16-bit software or have computers with less than 4GB of RAM. Anyway, this should work for you.

It's not really much extra effort on my part to build a 32-bit version, since I can build 32-bit and 64-bit Windows binaries on the same PC without rebooting or switching computers.

Thank you very much for this; it opened with no trouble at all.
I'm using FossaMail at present as I couldn't get Interlink to import the settings from Fossa and also Interlink just didn't work as well as Fossa did. Here's hoping that Epyrus will be as good as Fossa.

[distantpluto]

Well I've been running up to speed for one day and no obvious problems so far...

I spoke too soon! I'll post this here first before opening an issue as it could be something obvious I'm missing.

I can't compose a new email as plain text, either from the toolbar button or the file menu. Shift clicking doesn't work either. I can get plain text via "reply to..." and this switches to HTML with a shift click.

I tried safe mode and fiddling with config prefs but it is still the same. Can anyone else please confirm or deny this?

Edit: forgot to mention I had unticked the HTML option in the associated mail accounts composition tab.

[athenian200]

I spoke too soon! I'll post this here first before opening an issue as it could be something obvious I'm missing.

I can't compose a new email as plain text, either from the toolbar button or the file menu. Shift clicking doesn't work either. I can get plain text via "reply to..." and this switches to HTML with a shift click.

Well, I have no idea why it would be doing that, or how to fix it. We are unfortunately in the same boat here.

Yeah... honestly, given that people expect someone writing an application like this to have an understanding of add-ons, and definitely to know how to fix what is probably a JavaScript issue somewhere in the application... I'm thinking that I may have promised something I can't actually deliver. I can take an application and more or less make it build against UXP, but I just realized that I basically don't know what to do with it once I have done that...

I'm quickly finding that filling the needs of actual people using these applications require skills and resources that I do not have. You guys will probably need to dial your expectations way back. This application will probably take a long time to be as good as what you are used to, if it ever is.

It is not taking long for me to feel like I am way in over my head once real people start using my application and reporting problems to me that I don't have the first clue how to solve. It's probably not a good sign that every time something comes up that feels like a curve ball I feel unqualified and like I am doing something I have no business doing...

https://repo.palemoon.org/athenian200/h ... s/issues/4

I've opened an issue. Well, I guess we'll see if it ever gets resolved...

[distantpluto]

I'm quickly finding that filling the needs of actual people using these applications require skills and resources that I do not have. You guys will probably need to dial your expectations way back. This application will probably take a long time to be as good as what you are used to, if it ever is.

It is not taking long for me to feel like I am way in over my head once real people start using my application and reporting problems to me that I don't have the first clue how to solve. It's probably not a good sign that every time something comes up that feels like a curve ball I feel unqualified and like I am doing something I have no business doing...

Please don't feel despondent, it's working great for me apart from this one issue! I'm going to keep using it. Your time and effort is very much appreciated, just take your time and we'll see where this goes. No pressure

[athenian200]

Please don't feel despondent, it's working great for me apart from this one issue! I'm going to keep using it. Your time and effort is very much appreciated, just take your time and we'll see where this goes. No pressure

Thank you.

Yeah, I should remember that I did say this was an alpha version, and I haven't even started doing research on the issue yet. It's too early to get discouraged. The more of these we find now, the less of them will be in the final version.

[Moonchild]

I'm quickly finding that filling the needs of actual people using these applications require skills and resources that I do not have. You guys will probably need to dial your expectations way back.

Maybe you didn't realize this but I've been providing user support for interlink very regularly (and not Tobin), mostly for practical issues like how to do certain things in the client. So don't take yourself out of the equation just because of that! Support for how to work IN a Thunderbird client is a whole different thing than building it. To be honest I'm still learning things about Pale Moon's operation myself as well, even after this long, so you really shouldn't feel bad about not instantly knowing everything about the program you're building, yourself! You can't compare this to writing something small from scratch by yourself and knowing everything that went in it.

[athenian200]

Maybe you didn't realize this but I've been providing user support for interlink very regularly (and not Tobin), mostly for practical issues like how to do certain things in the client. So don't take yourself out of the equation just because of that! Support for how to work IN a Thunderbird client is a whole different thing than building it. To be honest I'm still learning things about Pale Moon's operation myself as well, even after this long, so you really shouldn't feel bad about not instantly knowing everything about the program you're building, yourself! You can't compare this to writing something small from scratch by yourself and knowing everything that went in it.

Ah, that is true. I am probably used to knowing exactly what changes I made and what I put into everything I work on. It was kind of a revelation to realize that you had worked on an e-mail client before. I had previously thought he was supposed to be the e-mail guy that knew everything there was to know about Thunderbird and related clients, and that the whole point of BinOC was basically to be an unofficial-but-still-aligned MailNews-focused organization to make it less work for you. It's kind of looking like between the platform changes Interlink required and the fact that you wound up providing user support anyway, it really didn't result in much less trouble for you after all.

But yeah, I definitely appreciate your help. It really has been invaluable. Since you have been helping people out with practical issues like that already, hopefully you won't mind if occasionally you still wind up doing that with Epyrus. It helps to remember that I'm not completely on my own with my effort to create an alternative e-mail client.

[smithy]

Works like a dream on Linux mint xfce.
Many thanks

[athenian200]

Okay, so I have update on the issue... I very nearly used this fix, thinking it might be related...

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=731688

At first I was thinking I had hit the issue because changing the delivery format doesn't shift the mode of message composition from HTML to plaintext or vice-versa. However, upon closer inspection I thought applying this fix had made the shift-click thing and unchecking the HTML e-mail thing he mentioned work. Then I went back to a previously built version and found the shift-click thing and unchecking the box worked even without this fix and I was able to compose messages as plain text...

So I kind of ran off and tried to fix something by hunting for a patch on Bugzilla desperately, but now I'm realizing that I didn't have a clear idea of what was broken in the first place, or if it was broken at all.

EDIT: Well, this wasn't a total loss. I figured out that the only thing broken before was that shift-clicking on "Edit As New" didn't allow you to edit a message as plaintext before. In the version I just fixed by applying that patch, it now does. So apparently the fix I applied worked, but now I'm not sure if what I fixed was the thing that was broken in the first place.

EDIT2: Okay, I noticed that shift-clicking to edit a message as plaintext from the file menu didn't work on the unfixed version, but does work on the version I fixed... so I may have actually fixed this after all.

[andyprough]

I can't compose a new email as plain text, either from the toolbar button or the file menu. Shift clicking doesn't work either. I can get plain text via "reply to..." and this switches to HTML with a shift click.

I do not understand the issue here. If I open a new message, then under Options - Delivery Format I have the Plain Text option.

[athenian200]

Yeah, I'm not sure what's going on. It seems like there is some kind of intermittent issue going on with shift-clicking to edit as plaintext sometimes when that preference distantpluto mentioned is flipped (the one he changed via a checkbox). It was working fine until I flipped it even in the unfixed version. Then flipping it resulted in that version suddenly getting "stuck" on HTML e-mail no matter what I did. Whereas in the version I fixed I can't reproduce the problem no matter how many times I flip the pref/check the box, so I'm hoping this fixed it.

https://1drv.ms/u/s!AsscXELhr-eyh70i_2Q ... A?e=RErhKi

This is kind of a quick version 1.0.1... I didn't bother to change the actual version number in the application, but I'm labeling the tarball regardless so you can A/B test them. The main difference that is definitely there is that shift-clicking on Edit As New does not work in the unfixed version, while it does work in the fixed version, and it seems to be more robust in terms of how it handles the situation of editing an e-mail as plaintext or HTML in general.

[distantpluto]

Okay, so I have update on the issue... I very nearly used this fix, thinking it might be related...

I'm not sure what you fixed but it wasn't my problem! Apart from not being able to open a plain text compose window, I couldn't even enter anything in the HTML email compose window, it was "locked" and not writeable.

This is really bizarre but I have solved my problem completely by trial and error

In "Account Settings -> Copies & Folders", for my main account, even though I had the correct folders selected for "Message Archives" and "Drafts" I changed them both to "Other" with the same paths and now all compose windows open as they should and I can type in them as well Absolutely bonkers.

I can only apologise for any stress I caused you!

[athenian200]

I'm not sure what you fixed but it wasn't my problem! Apart from not being able to open a plain text compose window, I couldn't even enter anything in the HTML email compose window, it was "locked" and not writeable.

Oh, I see. I thought you were trying to switch to plain text because you weren't comfortable with HTML e-mail, not to get around a bug with the HTML e-mail compose window being locked.

Well, I did fix a problem related to people not being able to open plain text editors by shift clicking. Though it was in a very specific context of not being able to get "Edit as New" to edit anything as plain text, however it reworked the entire way composer does things because clearly there were times where things weren't being processed properly.

In "Account Settings -> Copies & Folders", for my main account, even though I had the correct folders selected for "Message Archives" and "Drafts" I changed them both to "Other" with the same paths and now all compose windows open as they should and I can type in them as well Absolutely bonkers.

I can only apologise for any stress I caused you!

It's no trouble at all, I am happy to try and help. Though the problem is that since I'm a programmer, my first impulse is to pull up Bugzilla and start moving lines of code around rather than troubleshoot the application as it stands. I'm actually curious why that was needed though... does the same problem occur with other e-mail clients with the same folder configuration or is it unique to Epyrus?

[distantpluto]

I'm not sure what you fixed but it wasn't my problem! Apart from not being able to open a plain text compose window, I couldn't even enter anything in the HTML email compose window, it was "locked" and not writeable.

Oh, I see. I thought you were trying to switch to plain text because you weren't comfortable with HTML e-mail, not to get around a bug with the HTML e-mail compose window being locked.

No, the original problem was I just could not open a plain text compose window at all, by any means, it would only open a HTML compose window. Not being able to write in it was just an added bonus!

Well, I did fix a problem related to people not being able to open plain text editors by shift clicking. Though it was in a very specific context of not being able to get "Edit as New" to edit anything as plain text, however it reworked the entire way composer does things because clearly there were times where things weren't being processed properly.

Well you have fixed a potential problem, so something good's come of this

It's no trouble at all, I am happy to try and help. Though the problem is that since I'm a programmer, my first impulse is to pull up Bugzilla and start moving lines of code around rather than troubleshoot the application as it stands. I'm actually curious why that was needed though... does the same problem occur with other e-mail clients with the same folder configuration or is it unique to Epyrus?

I've never seen anything like this with previous TB incarnations or with Interlink. I started with a clean profile as well, it's not like I just copied the old one over and crossed my fingers! I spent ages setting it up.

Thanks again

[athenian200]

I've never seen anything like this with previous TB incarnations or with Interlink. I started with a clean profile as well, it's not like I just copied the old one over and crossed my fingers! I spent ages setting it up.

Yeah, that's what I was afraid of. It does suggest that my e-mail client has weird bugs that are hard to pin down. I suspect that even though I can't reproduce this, I haven't seen the last of whatever is behind it.

You have fixed it, yes, but I can't see any clear connection between what you did and the behavior that cleared up in the first place. What you described definitely shouldn't be happening.

[distantpluto]

I've never seen anything like this with previous TB incarnations or with Interlink. I started with a clean profile as well, it's not like I just copied the old one over and crossed my fingers! I spent ages setting it up.

Yeah, that's what I was afraid of. It does suggest that my e-mail client has weird bugs that are hard to pin down. I suspect that even though I can't reproduce this, I haven't seen the last of whatever is behind it.

You have fixed it, yes, but I can't see any clear connection between what you did and the behavior that cleared up in the first place. What you described definitely shouldn't be happening.

I wouldn't worry unnecessarily with this particular issue as I suspect it could be a combination of moving my mailboxes "as-is", manually sorting folders to match how I had them set up previously and setting a up "global inbox". Just a hunch but it's not something anyone else is troubled by currently or has been historically (I searched extensively), so unique to me (hopefully).