Dekko as click?
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Hello,
I know Dan Chapman decided to drop click support in Dekko early this year but I wonder if anyone here is skilled enough to put some light on the topic for me.The project itself matured a lot since its last stable release that is available in the Ubuntu store (0.6.20). The last click package I could find is version 0.9.4 which is in many ways superior to its last stable release yet there are issues which make it pretty much unusable. Reading emails work just fine, it works offline which is great but sending emails is a very risky and unreliable proses - it mostly doesn't work and doesn't have any success/failure indication. One time I can't send anything and then I send 5 emails in a row.
Here is a list of available click packages: http://people.ubuntu.com/~dpniel/dekko/clicks/
The code of Dekko has moved from GitHub to Launchpad to a custom hosting here: https://code.dekkoproject.org/dekko-dev/dekko/tree/master (it seems that as of today the project is no longer available on Launchpad?)
So I wonder, what is the problem with brining current Dekko to our Ubuntu devices? Is it because of some click limitations or that nobody just built it?
The 0.9.4 works great and I can rely on it except when I need to reply or send a new email I have to reach for my web browser and access my email via its web view.
Thank you very much for shedding some light on this issue for me.
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From the UBports standpoint of view there should be no issues, except some maintainer is needed maybe. Dekko is a click application in the official store, so it should be feasable to fork it again into Github, start improving it and build a package from there.
However, we have no resources to do this ourselves, go out and find a team of people willing to contribute, then we can support with packaging
BR
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Rather than go forking Dekko, if someone sends me a patch that get's click support back in shape. We can see about doing a release.
Just because I'm personally no longer supporting click, doesn't mean someone else can't jump in and take the baton on that side and keep up the support. Patches are always welcomed! -
@DanChapman said in Dekko as click?:
Rather than go forking Dekko, if someone sends me a patch that get's click support back in shape. We can see about doing a release.
Just because I'm personally no longer supporting click, doesn't mean someone else can't jump in and take the baton on that side and keep up the support. Patches are always welcomed!This sounds more reasonable. Doing everything alone is what made Canonical fail (or at least not succeed fast enough) on Ubuntu Touch, we should learn from their mistakes.
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@DanChapman So whats the problem with click, it seemed to have worked one day...? Did they change msth in the interface?
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I personally use Dekko on both my tablet and phone. Mainly because that is all I can pick that meets my needs. I find it good, but not without its issues. For me reading emails is good, apart from ones from Facebook, they are incorrectly formatted.
Sending is another issue though. I can send emails, apart from my work Outlook email, which is a problem. I agree that there is no sending failure message and last time it happened to me, the email (that took some time to write) just closed down.
With a bit of work, this could be a really great multi-client email tool. It is a shame that support for this great little app stopped and I would welcome anyone running with it to make it truly great.
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@Flohack Yes packaging dekko as a click app did previously work but was always a real pain getting the cross-build environment set up, as 90% of the time I always hit dependency issues or something not working properly. I got to the point of being really fed up with it and decided to focus on the future, which back then was snaps. Snaps solved all the issues I previously had with building/packaging, and as UT was moving to snaps it made sense to support that going forward. There was only myself working on Dekko and I didn't want to be constantly bogged down by packaging issues.
If someone wishes to work on click support again they will also need to take into consideration that UT on 15.04 has no multi-window support, but Dekko supports this by default as it had landed in 16.04 which is my current target platform. So a patch would also be needed to turn the multiple windows into suitable pages in the main UI via the plugin framework.
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Canonical's latest rc-proposed images do have multiwindow support. I can open multiple windows of the default web browser.
How about UITK? Have you dropped it completely with the latest Dekko versions? It was there in 0.9.4 click I tested (it worked on OTA-15). If you did, would it be possible to build a version including UITK UI or you have modified the code that much that it is not possible to include it back either in standard or as even a compilation option?
EDIT: I see at least that the 0.9.7 snap that is currently in the edge repository does use UITK (at least it looks like it is using it).
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@Mitu yes the UITK is still in use right now, and patches are still landing for it. But a move to using QQC2 is going to be the way forward. The UI is loaded as a plugin at runtime so UITK and QQC2 versions could be developed in parallel and share the backend (currently only messaging) with no major changes. So it's trivial to add a compile time option for which UI plugin to include.
The UITK version will always remain in the source tree, so anyone that wants to help carry that on is welcomed
Or if Ubports moves to using a suru style for QQC2 (which is probably some way off, if at all) it should be quite easy to get Dekko working with that as well. -
I for one would like to see Dekko live on and go forward into a great app, which I believe it can be. From the sounds of it there are two versions floating around. How can I install the latest one as I got mine from the software store in Touch and there has not been any updates since.
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@Phil-UK not sure what you mean by two versions? There was a build marked version 0.9.4 which was a very early click package after the complete rewrite was started but it was never officially released. Just some folks picked it up off a launchpad blueprint.
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@DanChapman said in Dekko as click?:
was never officially released. Just some folks picked it up off a launchpad blueprint.
Oh I see, I thought it was released. So if that is the case I just have the latest official release
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Some Good News!!! Just wanted to let everyone know my interest is coming back
(Canonical just landing us in the (some expletive here) really put me off for a while) .Anyway I'm going to start working on getting the latest Dekko into the openstore for the legacy devices. It's going to take a few weeks at least to get there and it will most likely only have a subset of the current features as it is going to require a bit of a rework of the code. But you will be able to do all the basic mail management tasks.
Does anyone here have any objection to it being an unconfined app?
Once i've got some of the details ironed out I will set up a better location for discussing Dekko's features and plans going forward. As I will need as much input/ideas as possible. I don't think spamming the ubports forum is the right place for this.
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@DanChapman said in Dekko as click?:
Some Good News!!! Just wanted to let everyone know my interest is coming back
WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! This is good news!
Does anyone here have any objection to it being an unconfined app?
Probably not a bad idea. For productivity apps like Dekko, confinement isn't really handy. Being able to just send files from the file-system sounds really handy
Once i've got some of the details ironed out I will set up a better location for discussing Dekko's features and plans going forward. As I will need as much input/ideas as possible. I don't think spamming the ubports forum is the right place for this.
Feel free to spam here
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@DanChapman Yay! I love your mail client i was thinking on switching back to android as daily driver when hard dekko won't ve supported anymore. work
Thanks for all the hard work dekko us amazing!
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@DanChapman
First of all, thank you very much for the wonderful work you have done.
If I can express my opinion, a solution to what you ask may be insert on OpenStore two separate packages: the "old" DEKKO (I still use version 0.6.20) and the new package with limited functions.
In this way it will be possible for us to choose what App install, according to our needs.GM
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@GIEMME said in Dekko as click?:
on OpenStore two separate packages: the "old" DEKKO (I still use version 0.6.20) and the new package with limited functions.
+1
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In the recent restructuring of the project a new website has arisen, which you can find here. You will find links to the issue tracker, forum etc... so if you have any ideas, feature requests or want to get involved then head on over.
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@DanChapman Wonderful !!
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@DanChapman Thank you!
