Re:Dear Skype/Microsoft: Problems with Linux client
by criddell on Wednesday February 24, 2016 @11:23AM
(#11167895)
What makes an email client so difficult to write? I don't mean this to sound insulting, I just really don't understand where the complexity is. It seems like you should be able to get to a point where it is feature complete and all development efforts shift to maintenance mode. Or maybe I don't understand what's been going on with Thunderbird and perhaps it's been "done" for years now.
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Re:Dear Skype/Microsoft: Problems with Linux client
by mixmastamyk on Wednesday February 24, 2016 @12:35PM
(#11168522)
It is basically done. There could be UI refinements and updates to the occasional protocol/security change, but yeah, there's not been much innovation in email standards for a while.
Re:Dear Skype/Microsoft: Problems with Linux client
by smarinov on Wednesday February 24, 2016 @06:16PM
(#11171030)
Although, to be honest, email standards are a complete mess in some regards and I suppose this make such an endeavour not as trivial as it looks on first sight.
Just an example: try to create (and use) an IDN-based email address with non-ASCII characters in the local part. You will be amazed how incompatible on so many layers this actually is. I can hardly imagine there weren't dozens of similarly tricky situations where the developers of this, or any other email client for that matter, were forced to make quite serious design choices because of either ambiguity in standards, or widespread lack of support thereof.