Loud ramblings of a Software Artisan

GNOME Photo Printer is a little application that allows you to print multiple photo per pages, which is quite convenient. I haven't tested it yet as I don't have a printer, but I had to mention it.

Source: Newsforge and Footnotes.

Some just suck less than the others.

I have been alternating beetween Evolution and ThunderBird on Linux over a couple of month:

Thunderbird has the following issues:

• When showing message header, you can't scroll. Bug 223132
• Does not handle mailing lists: does not have "reply to mailing list" Bug 45715 and Bug 233417 as well as RFC 2369 conformancy.
• Does not allow changing the SMTP server for outgoing messages, despite the UI Bug 161117
• Expunging folders on IMAP is not easy (Evolution has Ctrl-E shortcut) Bug 127888
• The lack of "quote using selection" Bug 23394
• Still default sending HTML e-mails, which is bad, bad, bad.Bug 47140

Evolution has the following issues:

• Does not allow specifying a global SMTP server for all mail accounts Bug 71145. I often send directly with my local postfix SMTP server, but some retarded ISP here block outgoing TCP/25 making impossible to send yourself your mail. And their SMTP is unreliable.
• Heavy, slow and memory hungry. I still use a G3/400 PowerBook laptop.
• Antispam really slow and CPU hog, unlike Thunderbird's. And less efficient. Bug 72411
• Various editing issues, but probably relate to the fact that I run the development release, because Ubuntu pushes me to use it.

In short I'd say that I'd use Evolution more than Thunderbird.

Maybe I should try again Mutt, which I really like, but which was not convenient with multiple IMAP servers. Mutt made me love and require mail threading.

Update: note to Nat: I thread by default in Evolution. Otherwise I wouldn't even consider it.

Now that Qt has been released under GPL on Windows (link provided by glazblog (fr)), it runs freely on UNIX/X11, MacOS X and Windows. But where is Gtk ? Gtk-2.x runs on UNIX, on Windows, but still require X11 on MacOS X not making it really friendly. There is a port of Gtk+1.2 on MacOS X using Carbon done by the CinePaint team, but this is Gtk+1.2 while everything is currently using some 2.x version; and the project seems to be dormant.

I don't understand the lack of interest for this port by the MacOS X community. They are the first to whine about The Gimp being not well integrated with MacOS X, but porting Gtk+2.x to MacOS X without using X11 would probably resolve most of the issues. And it would also resolve the issue of lack of decent not overpriced and/or closed spreadsheet by allowing to port Gnumeric. This lack of interest is still visible with the lack of developers for AbiWord on MacOS X. When I had to stop developing it due to lack of hardware, nobody did anything until FJF took over. And it is not the lack of interest from people, it is just the lack of skilled MacOS X developers willing to work on Open Source projects.