> I used Readmail quite a few years ago, and wrote a wrapper package to
> make it into a complete mail reader. Then I found Yarn (.66?), and
> dropped the project.
I use the last beta of Readmail that Schipper put out -- version 5.76b.
It is a completely functional offline news/mail processor with the exception
of builtin support for decoding and reading MIME, uuencode, quoted
printable, rich text format, HTML, SQML -- and the pleathora of other new
kinds of special data the e-mails system is not carrying around.
However, any program that can save messages to a file lets one use
external decode/view programs without too much trouble.
> Now I use Mutt
Out of curiosity, why to you still read the Yarn listserv, if you use Mutt?
I've heard of Mutt -- I believe a gui product that runs only on Unix and/or
Linux -- yes? For on-line news/mail I have a Unix shell account with my ISP.
I therefore can run procmail, formail, tin, trn, mail, pine, elm, etc.
I doubt that Mutt would give me more functionality.
(Mutt) is a bit like what Yarn might have become if Chin
>had released the source code.
Readmail's history parallel's that of Yarn: At one point Jeroem Schipper
just stopped support and development of his admittedly unfinished software.
About 5 months ago an interested developer asked for the source code for
Readmail. As with Chin, Schipper did not provide it.
My love/hate relationship with Readmail stems from the fact that is has
quite a few undocumented features - annoying behaviours - unfixed bugs.
On the other hand I have been unable to find any other news/mail processor
that has the combination of features I miss in Yarn, namely:
Its hard to undigest certain digests for Yarn (ddigest does not work very
well).
Readmail can read almost any type of digest either as a single
message, or as an (undigested) set of messages. I think it is the
only program with this feature.
The Soup binary format and its cousen, Yarn's format, are very touchy and
fragile: One little problem, or a few misplaced bytes and a whole inbox
or folder becomes corrupt and must be rebuilt.
Readmail can (in principle) read mail and news messages in any format
that a user can define, including soup binary and yarn. In particular
Readmail can directly read rnews and Unix mailbox formats -- These are
fairly robust plain text formats that are not so prone to corruption.
Yarn's summary list of news/mail messages does not include the date (!).
Yarn only shows the Subject and From lines from a message header, in its
list of messages.
Readmail lets you pick on the fly(!) from various combinations of:
Subject, From, Sender, Date, Lines, Message # when you view a list
of messages.
It is difficult to move the selection part to a particular message.
Readmail numbers messages (like Unix mail). You can move to a
message by typing its number, or you can select it with a mouse.
Yarn has virtually no support for cutting and pasting text between messages,
replies, new mail, saved files, etc.
Readmail uses the TurboPascal multiple window interface, with (almost)
full mouse support. You can open and edit files from within the mailer.
You can include the text of several messages in one reply. You can
work with several windows at once.
(An annoying omission is that cut/paste works with the builtin editor
but not within the message window!)
Yarn provides limited control over the format of your outgoing messages, and
no control over the packet format (it must be Soup binary).
Readmail gives you complete control over what goes in your outgoing
message headers, and supports virtually all packet formats (e.g.,
one file per message, Unix text format, Soup, custom, etc.). As a
result, you can use almost any software you want to send out messages
and replies. For example, I configured readmail to add its replies to
Yarn's replies.zip packet.
Yarn does not allow previewing of messages, when you have a long list of
messages.
Readmail has a movable preview window like MS Outlook (i.e., you can
see the first few lines of each message in a list as you browse).
Yarn has no way to tag or bookmark messages, and perform operations on
the tagged messages.
Readmail allows you to tag messages individually or by pattern, and
perform operations of tagged messages such as save, delete, read.
Now that is a long list of nice features. On the other hand readmails
bugs and bad behaviours will never be fixed. And it will never come
on it, for instance, a 32 bit DJGPP port. Are there any products
that offer comperable features?