I may have found what is, for me, the ultimate OS X mail client. My requirements are thus:
1. Don’t make me use the mouse every other second!
- Decent IMAP support.
- good keyboard capability/customizability. (I might have already said something to that effect)
- Vi key bindings in the compose window, for preference.
- Did I mention that I like to use the keyboard?
Basically, mutt is the most efficient client I’ve used, but html email is the cold, hard reality of this day and age, and having integration with the rest of the OS is a must. I had more or less bent Mail.app to my will with a combination of the excellent Mail Act-On for filing and some custom applescripts and quicksilver triggers for quickly moving between inboxes. (applescripting for Mail is a whole post on its own, by the way
- some things you just plain can’t do, because there are bugs in some of Mail’s applescript implementation.) However, the last straw was when I found and installed viAllOver, and it worked beautifully, (more or less) but not in the compose window! Come to find out, Mail uses an "editable WebView" or some such for the compose window, as opposed to the normal NSTextView that viAllOver takes over. (another post coming about viAllOver and leopard)
So, I went looking for another client.
Mulberry: the best imap client out there, according to some - BUT carbon-based, and therefore not responsive to cocoa-based input managers. Thunderbird: the UI has never done much for me, and the IMAP support is a bit wonky. Entourage: hahahahahaha Eudora: didn’t seriously consider it MailSmith: again with the no-vi Correo: way too early in the development cycle
I’m probably missing a couple that I looked into - I didn’t even consider several that only have POP support.
Time for bed... tune in tomorrow to find out why I think Gyazmail may be the One Client To Rule Them All. for me, anyway. at least 6 days out of the week