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

Board for discussions around the Epyrus mail and news client.

Moderator: athenian200

What should the E-mail client be named?

Poll ended at 2022-05-22, 09:55

Epyrus
26
62%
Centrapost
4
10%
Hermopolis Mail
11
26%
Raphemail
0
No votes
Hermopost
1
2%
 
Total votes: 42

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

Unread post by andyprough » 2022-07-27, 14:01

Moonchild wrote:
2022-07-27, 13:37
Workflows get disrupted; it happens and is pretty much inevitable when changes are made or people swap to new software. There will always be people for whom an objective improvement will cause issues; there will always be situations you couldn't think of before they were presented to you by others.
I'm wondering if it will be possible at some point to have long-term-support versions of Pale Moon and of Epyrus - something we can fall back on if the new feature releases aren't working well in our particular setup? Something that is stable over a longer period but gets the important security patches. It's probably too much work for not enough people, but it would fill a particular need.

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

Unread post by Giraffe » 2022-07-27, 15:30

athenian200 wrote:
2022-07-27, 07:02
Okay, it looks like I didn't miss an obvious detail, and that does make me feel a lot better about the situation. It was a lot trickier than I thought it was going to be.

I have new builds going as I speak, and the solution was rather involved. What I realized first while analyzing the dependencies that were leading to those library requests being made, and I noticed that Epyrus itself wasn't calling for any of these libraries. It was only the msvcp140.dll file bundled with the application that was calling for that stuff. I tried replacing the one I included with the one that the redist package installs to C:\Windows\System32... and the application worked.

What I eventually figured out was that there are two copies of msvcp140.dll that are very easy to get mixed up. There's one version that simply contains the CRT that I need, and another version that goes beyond including the CRT to including pointers to core Windows functions only found on newer versions of Windows. I had been including the wrong version with my application, while Microsoft's redist package included the correct one. So I did the build again with the correct version on a machine with no redistributable installed, and it still complained it was missing a new file called vcruntime140_1.dll. This file is part of the new runtime, simply didn't exist previously, and so our build system didn't include it. I added an asterisk wildcard to treat the entry for vcruntime140*.dll as more than one file to copy over to the final target. That seemed to be what was needed.

Suffice it to say, my application now seems to run on Windows 7 without a redist package.

EDIT: I tested these as thoroughly as I could, on Windows 7 and 8 without any redist installed. Hopefully this does the trick...

https://1drv.ms/u/s!AsscXELhr-eyh71kfY4 ... Q?e=UnBRwq
This now works, thank you. I made a new folder with "Copy" in the title, copied the contents of 1.1.0 into it, copied 1.2.0 into the original 1.1.0 and it opened and d/l mail.
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Re: I'm working on a new E-mail client for UXP.

Unread post by distantpluto » 2022-07-27, 16:31

athenian200 wrote:
2022-07-27, 13:25
...but there might be someone relying on an Epyrus feature whose workflow would be disrupted by a bug.
Anyone having reliance on beta software does so at their own risk ;) Presumably they also backup diligently :D
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Re: I'm working on a new E-mail client for UXP.

Unread post by athenian200 » 2022-07-28, 01:43

andyprough wrote:
2022-07-27, 14:01
I'm wondering if it will be possible at some point to have long-term-support versions of Pale Moon and of Epyrus - something we can fall back on if the new feature releases aren't working well in our particular setup? Something that is stable over a longer period but gets the important security patches. It's probably too much work for not enough people, but it would fill a particular need.
There are times at which Pale Moon has treated the main release branch as something of an "LTS version" while working on major changes that we think might break things. We did releases on the "redwood" branch while doing a lot of (still technically unfinished) WebComponents work on the release branch, for instance.

The problem is that a lot of times something will work on every developer's system and then fail when it's sent out into the wild to be used on real-world configurations. And the longer we go without releasing what we're working on, the more likely problems like that will accumulate. I probably should have done another Epyrus release about a month ago, if I'm being honest. That would have been a better version to go back to if this one didn't work out.

The thing is, the longer you've gone between releases, the more anxious it makes you to put out what you've been working on, because you know it's had time to accumulate issues that you can't see. It tempts you to hold back your work and keep users on the stable version, and ensures when you do put out your work, it will be one major disaster after another in rapid succession.

So my take away from observing these sorts of things over the years is this:
  • Small projects are dependent on end users to act as beta testers.
  • If you try to maintain a stable branch, developers get too reckless with the development branch.
  • End users will tend to stick with the stable branch if given a choice, meaning an already small pool of testers shrinks even further.
So in summary, trying to maintain an LTS version would result in worse testing coverage, make developers sloppier, and make end users more fearful of upgrades and determined to stick to the stable branch or older versions. Essentially, the solution is to not go so long between releases that having to roll back temporarily due to a botched update or two would be a major problem. But by the same token, it's also a bad idea to force an immediate update in a situation where it could cause a problem, and such updates should never apply by default without asking. Let the users stay on older versions as long as they want, but don't give them the impression that the older version will get new stuff.
"The Athenians, however, represent the unity of these opposites; in them, mind or spirit has emerged from the Theban subjectivity without losing itself in the Spartan objectivity of ethical life. With the Athenians, the rights of the State and of the individual found as perfect a union as was possible at all at the level of the Greek spirit." -- Hegel's philosophy of Mind

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

Unread post by andyprough » 2022-07-28, 04:43

athenian200 wrote:
2022-07-28, 01:43
End users will tend to stick with the stable branch if given a choice, meaning an already small pool of testers shrinks even further.
Some users already stay with some older version of Pale Moon because they like its stability or like the way it works with their favorite theme or extension. Epyrus will eventually run into the same phenomenon. Just something I was thinking about - I think it would help to gain and keep users, not to lose them to an old, stale version.

Anyway, I'm not a programmer, I do not need to be telling you your business, you are actually doing incredibly well, very impressive work. Epyrus flat-out works with all my email accounts, including with the protonmail-bridge, which is no easy task.

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

Unread post by athenian200 » 2022-07-28, 05:27

andyprough wrote:
2022-07-28, 04:43
Some users already stay with some older version of Pale Moon because they like its stability or like the way it works with their favorite theme or extension. Epyrus will eventually run into the same phenomenon. Just something I was thinking about - I think it would help to gain and keep users, not to lose them to an old, stale version.
Well, extension or theme compatibility does make some sense as a reason to stick with an older version. But stability as a reason actually worries me... if users have given up on the idea of newer versions of Epyrus (or Pale Moon) ever being stable and simply don't trust newer versions in that regard, that's very bad. It suggests that our newer versions are seen as garbage that will never be stable and that the old versions belong to some kind of "golden era" where things were done well. And if that's the case... why should we release the newer versions at all?

Like what I'm trying to say is, I don't want to wake up one day and find that everyone hates the newest version of my software and they only want the security updates to the last version that didn't suck so badly. If that is really how people feel, then it makes developing a newer version at all pointless and suggests the security updates are the only things worth our time to work on.

That said, I will consider it if there's ever a clear development situation where we have to move forward on something that will cause problems in the short-term, but everyone can agree it will be a good thing long-term. That would be when an ESR would make sense. If people will want the newer version eventually, but just not yet. The real danger is winding up with a Windows 7 situation where people NEVER want the new version of your software and want the ESR to last forever. That's a sign you've done something wrong.
Anyway, I'm not a programmer, I do not need to be telling you your business, you are actually doing incredibly well, very impressive work. Epyrus flat-out works with all my email accounts, including with the protonmail-bridge, which is no easy task.

Speaking of which, I really wonder why the Protonmail-Bridge isn't working for Baloo? All I really know is that it didn't work for him, and that he is on PopOS. I'll probably never find out more about that... I think I've likely lost a user over that issue, and never really understood why.
"The Athenians, however, represent the unity of these opposites; in them, mind or spirit has emerged from the Theban subjectivity without losing itself in the Spartan objectivity of ethical life. With the Athenians, the rights of the State and of the individual found as perfect a union as was possible at all at the level of the Greek spirit." -- Hegel's philosophy of Mind

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

Unread post by Moonchild » 2022-07-28, 09:29

athenian200 wrote:
2022-07-28, 01:43
  • Small projects are dependent on end users to act as beta testers.
  • If you try to maintain a stable branch, developers get too reckless with the development branch.
  • End users will tend to stick with the stable branch if given a choice, meaning an already small pool of testers shrinks even further.
You're missing another few points: maintaining an LTS branch literally doubles (and then some) all the work needed for web maintenance, release engineering (building, packaging, publishing) and adds more need to document things. As well as requires even more information from users when they report issues so makes support more difficult ("what release are you on?") and also makes security updates double work as there's no guarantee that it will just graft cleanly on an LTS version, especially if the main version is in flux.
All this double work is something I've done already more than i care to do in the past and it's been taking away a lot of time from things that would be better served with my attention, and I really don't want to go back to parallel development like that unless I really have no choice.
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Re: I'm working on a new E-mail client for UXP.

Unread post by athenian200 » 2022-07-28, 10:55

Moonchild wrote:
2022-07-28, 09:29
You're missing another few points: maintaining an LTS branch literally doubles (and then some) all the work needed for web maintenance, release engineering (building, packaging, publishing) and adds more need to document things. As well as requires even more information from users when they report issues so makes support more difficult ("what release are you on?") and also makes security updates double work as there's no guarantee that it will just graft cleanly on an LTS version, especially if the main version is in flux.
All this double work is something I've done already more than i care to do in the past and it's been taking away a lot of time from things that would be better served with my attention, and I really don't want to go back to parallel development like that unless I really have no choice.
Yeah, I agree with all those points. I think that ultimately creating an LTS/ESR is an awful lot of work just to please users who likely won't be satisfied with the direction of the software long-term anyway. It would just be a spoonful of sugar to make the medicine go down, and they would likely eventually be left with the choice of using something else, forking, or being stuck with an old version sooner or later.
"The Athenians, however, represent the unity of these opposites; in them, mind or spirit has emerged from the Theban subjectivity without losing itself in the Spartan objectivity of ethical life. With the Athenians, the rights of the State and of the individual found as perfect a union as was possible at all at the level of the Greek spirit." -- Hegel's philosophy of Mind

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

Unread post by jobbautista9 » 2022-07-28, 11:59

I wonder if the crash from Baloo is caused by bug #1638634 or bug #1606091... We don't have those yet according to Issue #1312 (UXP).
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Re: I'm working on a new E-mail client for UXP.

Unread post by athenian200 » 2022-07-28, 13:56

jobbautista9 wrote:
2022-07-28, 11:59
I wonder if the crash from Baloo is caused by bug #1638634 or bug #1606091... We don't have those yet according to Issue #1312 (UXP).
I have no idea if it's related, but the bugs you highlighted seem like fairly straightforward, one-line changes of the type that make sense for preventing potential crashes, and they were already highlighted as likely desirable, so I see no issue with taking them on board.
"The Athenians, however, represent the unity of these opposites; in them, mind or spirit has emerged from the Theban subjectivity without losing itself in the Spartan objectivity of ethical life. With the Athenians, the rights of the State and of the individual found as perfect a union as was possible at all at the level of the Greek spirit." -- Hegel's philosophy of Mind

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

Unread post by andy80 » 2022-07-29, 05:36

Hi all,

it is few days that I am using Epyrus 1.1.0 on Linux (openSUSE Tumbleweed) and so far I would say that it works very nicely. So, thanks athenian200 for your work.

In Epyrus, I have been able to preserve all my previous mails and configurations, as well as theme and extensions.
  • My mail configuration has been carried over different tools (Netscape suite, Thunderbird, Fossa Mail, Interlink, Epyrus) and the only adaptation it needed is a "sed" to fix the absolute profile path in four textual files.
  • My mails are all in a single local folder with multiple subfolders; the mails are fetched from several POP3 servers (with messages left on the server as well) and stored locally in a different mailbox file for each folder.
  • As theme, I use Nuvola, and I see no issues with it.
  • I have two dictionaries (British English and Italian) and they work as expected.
  • I have three extensions active (Display Mail User Agent, Enigmail, and Toggle Word Wrap) and running.
At the first run, Epyrus was not able to show the mails, even if the folders in the left panel were shown correctly, as well as the number of unread messages. In the folder property, it was not showing the path of the mailbox file and its statistics, so I tried to repair the folder and also compact all of them. After this operation, Epyrus has been able to show the mails, but they were all shown duplicated (but the mailbox file on the disk did not double its size). To solve this, I closed Epyrus, restored the local mail directory from backups, and started Epyrus again and everything was fine; I am not sure what changes occurred while doing this, but now mails are shown correctly.

The only issue I can see now is that Enigmail is adding twice its menu entries to the menu bar and to the mail contextual menu; I can just ignore them since they are not a big issue.

Again, thanks athenian200 for providing Epyrus.

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

Unread post by athenian200 » 2022-07-29, 08:00

andy80 wrote:
2022-07-29, 05:36
Hi all,

it is few days that I am using Epyrus 1.1.0 on Linux (openSUSE Tumbleweed) and so far I would say that it works very nicely. So, thanks athenian200 for your work.
I'm glad it's working for you. :)
At the first run, Epyrus was not able to show the mails, even if the folders in the left panel were shown correctly, as well as the number of unread messages. In the folder property, it was not showing the path of the mailbox file and its statistics, so I tried to repair the folder and also compact all of them. After this operation, Epyrus has been able to show the mails, but they were all shown duplicated (but the mailbox file on the disk did not double its size). To solve this, I closed Epyrus, restored the local mail directory from backups, and started Epyrus again and everything was fine; I am not sure what changes occurred while doing this, but now mails are shown correctly.

The only issue I can see now is that Enigmail is adding twice its menu entries to the menu bar and to the mail contextual menu; I can just ignore them since they are not a big issue.
The duplication issue is interesting, and I am wondering what's causing that, but I am glad it wasn't a deal breaker for you.
Again, thanks athenian200 for providing Epyrus.
No problem. I've really just done the bare minimum to get everything working on UXP and rip out Mozilla's branding/services/advertisements so far. I hope I can improve on it over time.
"The Athenians, however, represent the unity of these opposites; in them, mind or spirit has emerged from the Theban subjectivity without losing itself in the Spartan objectivity of ethical life. With the Athenians, the rights of the State and of the individual found as perfect a union as was possible at all at the level of the Greek spirit." -- Hegel's philosophy of Mind

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

Unread post by Bilbo47 » 2022-08-02, 23:32

Um. It looks like the calendar component is removed / missing from 1.2.0? Switched the runtime back to 1.0.0, and the menu "Events and Tasks" once again appeared, along with the sidebar-column. On the other hand, adding a WebDav calendar was causing 1.0.0 to crash hard, so I had already decided to do try calendaring in some other platform, not Epyrus. Guess this is now the only choice?

Edit: maybe the version number in the Lightning XPI needs a bump?
Last edited by Bilbo47 on 2022-08-02, 23:40, edited 1 time in total.

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

Unread post by Bilbo47 » 2022-08-02, 23:35

Epyrus 1.0.0 was a *HUGE* improvement over the umm previous app for email accounts on Yahoo. The experience went from unusably slow to as fast as can be expected, considering it's Yahoo. So, kudos for that.

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

Unread post by athenian200 » 2022-08-03, 01:37

Bilbo47 wrote:
2022-08-02, 23:32
Um. It looks like the calendar component is removed / missing from 1.2.0? Switched the runtime back to 1.0.0, and the menu "Events and Tasks" once again appeared, along with the sidebar-column. On the other hand, adding a WebDav calendar was causing 1.0.0 to crash hard, so I had already decided to do try calendaring in some other platform, not Epyrus. Guess this is now the only choice?
The Calendar should still be included. I didn't notice that missing at all, and haven't changed anything with regards to that part of the configuration. I would have mentioned it if I intended to leave that out. That is an example of what I mean when I say I am really bad at noticing details... this is why I do not care for doing release engineering. That part of the process responds best to consistency, and unfortunately consistency and polish are not my strong suits. I can't believe that my 1.0.0 release is still the best one, and every subsequent release is just worse. :/

I'll be honest, I get no pleasure out of the part of the job I have taken on by releasing Epyrus. I thought I had everything fixed and it's been sitting there busted for days. I would just as soon have someone else do it, but there's no one else to do it, or at least the way they would do it probably wouldn't go in the direction I want.
"The Athenians, however, represent the unity of these opposites; in them, mind or spirit has emerged from the Theban subjectivity without losing itself in the Spartan objectivity of ethical life. With the Athenians, the rights of the State and of the individual found as perfect a union as was possible at all at the level of the Greek spirit." -- Hegel's philosophy of Mind

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

Unread post by Bilbo47 » 2022-08-03, 02:06

Calendar should still be included.
Okay, maybe I'll try it with a newly-created profile, or poke around inside the XPI for a version limit. Weirdly, the add-ons list doesn't show Lightning at all, let alone list it as disabled..

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

Unread post by athenian200 » 2022-08-03, 02:11

Bilbo47 wrote:
2022-08-03, 02:06
Calendar should still be included.
Okay, maybe I'll try it with a newly-created profile, or poke around inside the XPI for a version limit. Weirdly, the add-ons list doesn't show Lightning at all, let alone list it as disabled..
It's not working. I just confirmed. If I try installing it, it says it appears to be corrupt. I have no idea what's going on here, and I'm not happy to just have a simple client with no calendar as a solution. I'm not a fan of ripping out features to provide a more "polished" core that just works rather than solving problems.

EDIT: I found a temporary solution, builds are incoming.
"The Athenians, however, represent the unity of these opposites; in them, mind or spirit has emerged from the Theban subjectivity without losing itself in the Spartan objectivity of ethical life. With the Athenians, the rights of the State and of the individual found as perfect a union as was possible at all at the level of the Greek spirit." -- Hegel's philosophy of Mind

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

Unread post by athenian200 » 2022-08-03, 03:03

https://1drv.ms/u/s!AsscXELhr-eyh71m3yM ... w?e=h0uFv1

These builds allow the calendar to work. I'm really sorry about all this. Too much has changed between releases, and people are running into all kinds of little usability issues I don't even notice in development.

This is one of my weaknesses as a person who isn't very "visual." Someone else would have noticed the calendar not working right away. I could miss a huge detail like that if I'm not looking for it, let alone smaller ones.

NOTE: The Windows version is now ahead of the Linux version, and that's because the fixes I've done are all essentially addressing Windows-only bugs. Next set of versions that are cross-platform will bring the version numbers back in line.
"The Athenians, however, represent the unity of these opposites; in them, mind or spirit has emerged from the Theban subjectivity without losing itself in the Spartan objectivity of ethical life. With the Athenians, the rights of the State and of the individual found as perfect a union as was possible at all at the level of the Greek spirit." -- Hegel's philosophy of Mind

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

Unread post by distantpluto » 2022-08-03, 09:55

Eh? When was 1.2 announced/released? BTW, I've noticed no usability issues with version 1.0 or 1.1, including WebDav calendars.
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Re: I'm working on a new E-mail client for UXP.

Unread post by athenian200 » 2022-08-03, 10:01

distantpluto wrote:
2022-08-03, 09:55
Eh? When was 1.2 announced/released? BTW, I've noticed no usability issues with version 1.0 or 1.1, including WebDav calendars.
1.2.x series is just a bugfix release for Windows, and it centers around weird issues with including MSVC's redistributable CRT and a bizarre Windows issue with Lightning that seemed to strike out of nowhere. It doesn't seem to affect Linux, so that's why no new Linux builds have been issued.

It's weird... it seems like I can figure out various libc and linker issues all day, but making sure a build is 100% ready for end users before sending it out is where I stumble.
"The Athenians, however, represent the unity of these opposites; in them, mind or spirit has emerged from the Theban subjectivity without losing itself in the Spartan objectivity of ethical life. With the Athenians, the rights of the State and of the individual found as perfect a union as was possible at all at the level of the Greek spirit." -- Hegel's philosophy of Mind

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