Claws Mail Revisited
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It seems like half of forever ago that circumstances with a serously FUBAR’d windows install on an equally FUBAR’d motherboard had me running Debian Linux for several months. During that time I became quite a fan of the Sylpheed-Claws mail client. I liked it’s features, the optional plugins and the fact that it had plugins that made it a natural for using GPG for digital signatures and encrytion. Best of all, it was free.
Eventually however, I ended up with a new mobo and a complete re-install of windows. I would have stayed with Linux but for some things that insist on running in windows. Unfortunately the windows port of my new favorite email client was… Um… somewhat less than I had become accustomed to.. It didn’t want to handle gpg functions very well at all.
Recently I heard that version 3.0.0-rc2 had been released.. this was several version numbers higher so I figured it’d be worth checking out again. So I clicked over to the GPG4Win site and got that since a win32 version of the newly renamed Claws Mail is part of the package.
I’ve only had it in since last night and just a few test messages, but so far it’s humming along great. gpg functions working perfectly, all of the filtering and processing power… everything is WAY better than it was something over six or seven versions ago.
The jury is still out, but most of the votes are in. About the only thing so far that it doesn’t have that I’d like to see is the ability to minimize to the system tray and not take space in the taskbar unless I restore it.
In any event, Kudos to the Claws Mail developers, thanks for bringing something good to windows
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Good to hear!
Few crashers have been found in the Windows port you’re using, they have been fixed upstream and the next gpg4win version that will ship Claws Mail 3.0.0 will contain the fixes. Alternatively, you could get the gpg4win weekly builds or contact me directly to get a snapshot build (latest SVN gpg4win w/ latest CVS Claws Mail).
FYI, the Windows port is still lacking important features, like SSL and IMAP support, many plugins, but it’s faily OK for a basic mail user (w/ core advanced features of course).. It’s a matter of time and efforts that missing stuff will be ported, though. Also, there might probably be a trayicon plugin rework that should work on Windows as well.
That’s great news. When I find a few spare minutes lying around I’ll look into the gpg4win weekly builds.