Pale Moon forum

Just for info... I've also built on Linux (Arch) to test my (few but essential) add-ons from Interlink (used previously in TB).

I'm not transferring all my email and using it fully just yet but have installed the following and as far as I can tell with a cursory glance, they appear functional...

FireTray 0.6.1
Manually Sort Folders 1.1.1
No Message Pane Sorting 1.2

I had LootyHoof's "Theme Tweaker 1.0.0" installed in Interlink but have not tried this in Epyrus.

Very exited to learn about this project and am looking forward to test it

Great to hear people's add-ons are working. I'm thinking anything that worked before should work now.

Anyway, I've created a checklist of every potential roadblock I can think of to an alpha release here:

https://repo.palemoon.org/athenian200/h ... s/issues/2

I've pretty much checked everything my brain can think of, and at this point I do think it should be ready for an "alpha release" of sorts. It's not going to be pretty... the parts where branding should appear are mostly blanked out and the UI is still Australis, but you all know where the application comes from anyway, and it's not like I have a clear artistic vision in mind and I'm afraid for people to see something unfinished. I'm just looking for a second pair of eyes to look through and see if there's anything I might have missed or failed to think of. The sooner people can start testing this out, the sooner I can get feedback and start trying to tailor it to what people want/need.

This does interest me somewhat, is it more lightweight on cpu than ver 52 thunderbird, icedove-uxp, etc?

Also, is it possible to disable all the stuff I would consider useless and proprietary?

I don't use gmail on my laptops, ever... well actually, barely...



Using youtube was really about the only reason I felt like doing that.

Less CPU usage = less electricity used

That is why I care



Battery life!

Well, no one else seems to have found anything that I need to remove that could potentially cause trouble before moving forwards, so I really don't have much choice but to move on hoping I got everything relevant. I did remove (or override) all the URLs I could find, maybe that means I got everything. I guess we'll see.

The next thing I want to do, is have some kind of branding competition, though I should really ask for permission before setting something like that up, since it might be a big production and involve a submission thread, a voting thread, etc. I was on a forum once where there were these art competitions every year, and a lot of members would create art and submit it to be judged. I'm thinking that I would like to do something similar here. Have people submit their ideas for what Epyrus branding might look like, and then have a round of voting to determine which one actually gets used. Alternatively, I suppose I could just get some money together and commission someone on DeviantArt or some place like that to create it, but that would be a last resort.

So I guess what I'd like to do is feel things out... is there any community interest in participating in some kind of branding competition, or would it be better to go the other route and just commission the branding? I understand programming, but when it comes to art or design-related stuff... I'm a bit out of my element, you know?

I think it depends on how much time you want to spend on deciding the branding before publishing anything. You could use the submitted generic branding and have initial releases with that before solidifying a logo and what not, as well. Entirely up to you what you want to prioritise here. I tried a community voting and submissions for Basilisk in the past, if you recall, and that was a bit messy (and I don't want to do that again) but maybe you have more luck streamlining it all

As for permission, I'm all for a community effort to decide branding if you want to go that route, and using the forum to organise it. Go right ahead.

I think the community idea by Moonchild is a good one. Even if you use it just as a way to get ideas?

Well, I'm thinking now that I have done enough work that it should be reasonably safe to publish at least an alpha for people to test while I am working on deciding the branding. The generic branding should work fine for just testing things out and looking for bugs. Now that I have permission, I am probably going to setup a branding/artwork submission thread, let that run for a while, and see how it goes. If no one submits any usable branding ideas, then I shrug and start hunting for an artist to commission. However, if it goes well, then the community will select from among the best candidates via another poll.

Okay, so I've decided to release a Windows version of the alpha here:

https://1drv.ms/u/s!AsscXELhr-eyh70fIbM ... g?e=Hillha

Bear in mind that you will likely have to generate your own OAuth2 key for GMail eventually (or use an app password), so if you're using that be aware. Use the prefs:

oauth2.google.clientid
oauth2.google.clientsecret

And change the values to match your self-generated OAuth2 key. The instructions here may help if you're not clear on how to do that:

https://www.claws-mail.org/faq/index.php/Oauth2

Another thing worth noting is that you'll probably want to install an alternate theme right out of the box, because I don't have a replacement for the default Australis theme ready to go. For now, a good stopgap solution would be installing FranklinDM's Moonscape theme. It's what I'm using right now. That wouldn't be a good default theme, though, because it uses the Netscape logo (legal issues) and it would be a little dated for most people's tastes.

https://projectfresco.github.io/addons/ ... =moonscape

It's one of the more complete and well-done themes that covers e-mail clients, and you can just download the XPI from his site there. I have managed to make this work well enough, but I will admit, when it comes to polish, branding, and release engineering, I still have a lot to learn.

Anyway, if someone needs a version for Linux or SunOS to test out, let me know. I'm thinking most curious people on Linux will be able to build themselves (at least for this stage since we're not at release quality yet), because historically that was the case back when I used it, and it's also just much easier to setup a development environment for Epyrus on Linux by grabbing the right packages from your distributions's repo and executing a few console commands. On Windows you have to really know what you're doing to setup a build environment... mess around with getting the right version of MozillaBuild, installing a Windows version of Git separately (because MozillaBuild only has Mercurial, no Git), possibly downloading MAPI headers (unless you disable MAPI, I guess), and getting the right Visual Studio version.

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

Giraffe wrote: ↑

2022-05-31, 08:37

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.

Glad to see you are working on this email client athenian200. Looking forward to when you create a Linux build. I tried Thunderbird for a minute and found it to be truly terrible UI wise.

On a random note for any supporters, would anyone be interested in forking Outlook 2003 GreenTB for use with this new mail client? I would love to see it be adapted and continued on. It worked with Interlink, it will likely work with the new client as well. But I would love to see a true fork. https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-US/th ... -dl-rating

Same thing with Cardbook 37.5. I attempted to get the developer of Cardbook to fork and add compatibility to Interlink, but he is Italian and I think there was a language barrier misunderstanding my past request.

Baloo wrote: ↑

2022-05-31, 15:30

Glad to see you are working on this email client athenian200. Looking forward to when you create a Linux build. I tried Thunderbird for a minute and found it to be truly terrible UI wise.

On a random note for any supporters, would anyone be interested in forking Outlook 2003 GreenTB for use with this new mail client? I would love to see it be adapted and continued on. It worked with Interlink, it will likely work with the new client as well. But I would love to see a true fork. https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-US/th ... -dl-rating

Same thing with Cardbook 37.5. I attempted to get the developer of Cardbook to fork and add compatibility to Interlink, but he is Italian and I think there was a language barrier misunderstanding my past request.

I'll be happy to do some forking and updating, including on URL Rewriter in your other thread, but I need clear instructions, including where and how to upload the new versions. I remember there used to be an extenstion hacking tutorial of some sort, but I don't see it as a sticky in the Add-on's forum. Do you know if anyone has a link to clear current instructions?

Edit: Never mind - I forgot there's the Add-on's developer page. I'll go read everything, see if I'm able to help with some of these.

Baloo wrote: ↑

2022-05-31, 15:30

Glad to see you are working on this email client athenian200. Looking forward to when you create a Linux build. I tried Thunderbird for a minute and found it to be truly terrible UI wise.

Ah, do you want a Linux build of the alpha?

Also, you aren't the first person to request that Green Outlook2003 theme be fixed up. It doesn't seem to work with my client out of the box... though there is a blue one that does.

andyprough wrote: ↑

2022-05-31, 16:41

I'll be happy to do some forking and updating, including on URL Rewriter in your other thread, but I need clear instructions, including where and how to upload the new versions.

I'm still in the alpha stage of things, so I haven't got everything setup nicely with a place to upload extensions like you guys are probably used to. At this point we're talking about people having to install XPI files manually and use DropBox or OneDrive. Even if you sent it to me, all I can really do right now is upload it to OneDrive and put a link here, like I did for the alpha builds. I might be able to use the Pale Moon Add-ons site, but I will have to ask first if I can do that, and second how I would actually integrate my application.

You do have to keep in mind that I'm a programmer first and foremost, and up until now the closest thing to release engineering I've had to do was creating SunOS builds for an application that already had branding and infrastructure. Depending on how things go, this may wind up being a far less polished application than the other one... manual XPI installations from stuff uploaded to random DropBox/OneDrive/Google Drive setups, no automatic updates, etc.

I do apologize for how rough/messy this is in advance, but we are hitting the stuff I don't have any kind of skill in. Adapting Thunderbird 52 to UXP and ripping out Mozilla services is one thing... branding, themes, services, automatic updates, and all the niceties everyone takes for granted are quite another. I will be the first to admit I am no expert on issues relating to extensions and themes, because I mostly work on the browser core.

I have a Linux build of the alpha up now.

https://1drv.ms/u/s!AsscXELhr-eyh70hm9F ... A?e=BHn9Em

Just remember, this alpha version is very rough, the beta will likely be much better.

The first actual release version will be version 2, all the 1.x.x versions will be alpha and beta.

Thanks athenian200 for uploading the Linux alpha! I'll give it a spin!

And actually, I meant to link to the Blue Thunderbird Outlook 2003 theme that works out of the box! That is my mistake. I was referring to this theme: https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-US/th ... b-edition/

Either way andyprough, if you can fork them and URL Rewriter as well, that would be a huge help! Thank you so much!

athenian200 wrote: ↑

2022-05-31, 19:35

I have a Linux build of the alpha up now.

https://1drv.ms/u/s!AsscXELhr-eyh70hm9F ... A?e=BHn9Em

Just remember, this alpha version is very rough, the beta will likely be much better.

The first actual release version will be version 2, all the 1.x.x versions will be alpha and beta.

After unpacking it was already execuaeble but it is just not starting.

Xubuntu 18.04 64 bit

Greetings Lothar

Lothar Weber wrote: ↑

2022-05-31, 22:59

After unpacking it was already execuaeble but it is just not starting.

Xubuntu 18.04 64 bit

Is it giving any kind of output? I don't have any clue why the binary would just randomly not work on your system. :/

I tested out the package and it works in my build environment... hmm.

Lothar Weber wrote: ↑

2022-05-31, 22:59

After unpacking it was already execuaeble but it is just not starting.

Works for me on Trisquel, which is based on Ubuntu. I do a "chmod +x epyrus" before I try running the binary even if it says it is executable, just to ensure it's set up well for my system.

Sorry about the Linux issues, I'm thinking I might actually need to redo the build in an RHEL 7 VM (since I can't run that OS on bare metal with my hardware). Linux is not as good with symbol versioning to mitgate these sorts of problems as something like SunOS. Sigh, I've gotten spoiled to not having to deal with glibc. Linux is just not designed for running binaries... it's always either building from source, relying on what your distro provides, or someone having to go out of their way to build against some ancient glibc so it works on everything people might be running...