Alternative Email client? (Kube-project)

poVoq

As much as Dekko2 is a nice option, its development seems slow and with missing contact integration etc. it feels very limited when you start using it, despite the core functionality working well.

And in the larger picture it seems like having a UT only email client (thus reinventing the wheel so to speak) is a bit of a futile effort...

Hence I am wondering if anyone looked into porting Kube? https://kube-project.com/

I have been using it on my KDE desktop and while the UI is a bit too redmondish right now, it uses qt quick controls 2 and seems like it would scale well from mobile to desktop. It is also very lightweight and should thus run well on somewhat older mobile devices.

Furthermore it comes with build-in email encryption, multi account support and CalDAV / CardDAV integration.

Given the tech it is build on, it would seem a relatively easy port at least once UT has a newer version of qt

arubislander

I would guess that this email client would also lack integration with the existing contacts app...

AppLee

@arubislander
Yes, the app confinement prevent access to the contact list.
So there is specific work to do in order to use the content hub to import contacts.

arubislander

@AppLee which work might just as 'easily' be done for Dekko.
What I mean to say is, while I am not against having more than one email client for Ubuntu Touch, I feel that for a developer community of our size, fragmentation of effort will hurt rather that help drive forward the user experience.
Yes there are email clients around that might have more features or less bugs than Dekko. But the effort required to integrate them with the different components of Ubuntu Touch is non trivial.

poVoq

@arubislander said in Alternative Email client? (Kube-project):

I would guess that this email client would also lack integration with the existing contacts app...

Well, if you are syncing contacts with CardDAV, then you could circumvent this integration issue...

While I understand your concern about fragmentation of development efforts, it could be said that Dekko2 itself is such a case and that Uborts should rather try to get Plasma Mobile apps working well.

AppLee

@poVoq said in Alternative Email client? (Kube-project):

syncing contacts with CardDAV

Still confinement issue here.

Porting apps to UT is not just about QML and languages. While events are the same, internet connectivity too, most of what people miss in UT is connected to confinement Android and iOS made it so it's useful enough to abandon your privacy for it.

UT does not handle data the same as the other. Confinement is the one feature I wouldn't trade for anything.
That's what gives webapps sense: an unconfined webapp is just a shortcut while a webapp for my bank is something very useful for security reason and privacy.

The content hub is the cornerstone to be able to share and access data on your device. That is a specific feature of UT that I love.
So any app willing to access to contacts should use the content hub.

IMHO the content hub could be extended to allow some useful feature for example background tracking GPS with the switch to allow each app to use it.

arubislander

@poVoq said in Alternative Email client? (Kube-project):

While I understand your concern about fragmentation of development efforts, it could be said that Dekko2 itself is such a case and that Uborts should rather try to get Plasma Mobile apps working well.

Dekko2 is not being maintained by UBports, if by that you mean employees of the Foundation or even what we consider the 'core' development team. It is totally maintained by volunteers who use it and wanted to fix the bugs they were experiencing.
I don't see it as fragmentation because at that point in time the app was already there for the platform, they just took over maintenance. Other options were considered at the time, but learning to navigate the codebase, fixing the bugs and adding missing features was considered to be the best course of action.

poVoq

Now that we are on qt5.12, anyone willing to look into this again? It seems like a really nice email client with a convergent UI.

Source-code is here: https://github.com/KDE/kube