Gnome/Moblin Modest
As I told in previous post, we’re developing actively a port of Modest for Gnome and Moblin, trying to keep the user experience we created in Maemo Fremantle releases.
While the goal is having something working for Moblin, Modest way of handling mails (kept simple, and fast to browse) is something you may definitely want to try in y our desktop.
Launchpad PPA for Modest
So, last weeks we’ve started to create packages of Modest for Ubuntu Karmic using the unstable development for Gnome&Moblin. For this we’re using Launchpad PPA. You can get packages for Karmic here:
https://launchpad.net/~jdapena/+archive/modest/
Of course, we would be glad to prepare releases for other distributions. Just ask.
Modest 3.90.x vs 3.2.x
If you check the Modest git repository you’ll see that we’re actively developing in two branches: master and modest-3-2:
- modest-3-2 branch is targetted for Fremantle releases, and is also the stable release path. If you want to install new releases of Modest in your N900 this is the branch you should use. The releases are happening often, and are numbered in 3.2.x series.
- master branch is the unstable work. The main change happening here is the creation of a Gnome&Moblin version of Modest, without hildon/maemo dependencies. This is the branch used for Launchpad PPA releases.
So, Modest release 3.90.4
Today I’ve prepared release 3.90.4 of Modest. The main new feature is that it includes support for handling calendar invitation requests in plugins. So a protocol plugin would be able to handle the calendar invitations and add accept/tentative/decline buttons. Also some bugfixes.
In next hours this should be available in Modest PPA.
I pleased to hear this announcement!
But I wonder if you could move the git repository into gitorious, because I just can’t clone modest from maemo.org.
In fact I’m maintaining mostly updated a clone in gitorious. There you can also find the specific branch I’m using for releases in launchpad PPA. The uri is http://gitorious.org/modest
I really think modest in fremantle needs a lot more work. Its still rather slow for me on an imap accounts, it often does silly things like reload the entire list of mailboxes, takes a lot of time to load mailboxes (even after PR1.1, it can still take 15 seconds) and is missing crucial features like searching. I would like to see these things fixed properly in fremantle/harmattan before devs spend their time porting a phone/tablet-driven mail client to a netbook/desktop experience.
I second that. Modest on Maemo shows a lot of promise, but it is not entirely useful today. Speed being the main issue and I agree that search is a must-have feature to add, although I would say that spell checking is even more important. But even if no features are added, just making it snappy would make it tremendously more appealing.
Does POP3 work properly? Can you finally select and copy email text? ‘Cause the way it is now, Modest 3.20 is barely usable.
Hi,
I hope the expanding to more platforms brings you more help and patches to improve the current version.
As already mentioned, the current version running on fremantle is quite dramatic with serious holes. Nevertheless, the improvements from the diablo versions are quite noticeable and thus I would like to congratulate you and urge you to continue the good work at the same time.
Thanks.