Trojita v0.2.9: a Qt IMAP e-mail client

It's my pleasure to announce that version v0.2.9 of Trojitá, a fast and lightweight IMAP e-mail client based on the Qt library, is now available. For more details of what Trojitá is and who should use it, please see below.

Most of the changes in this version happened under the hood, but there is a bunch of user-facing improvements -- the most prominent one is probably the support for display of message threading (ie. "conversations").

(Permanent link to this announcement.)

Changes since version v0.2

Refactored core IMAP code with safer command pipelining and increased robustness

Message threading (aka "conversations") in the message list

Plenty of bug fixes and GUI tweaks

Improved unit test coverage

Internal changes allowing making new UI frontends easier

First real-world application of Trojitá in a library-like fashion

Sadly, the Maemo version which first appeared as a beta during fall of 2010 could not be merged into the main repository before this release, but you should stay tuned for future updates.

xTuple integration

Trojitá is going to be featured as an addon for the xTuple business management software. Using Trojitá will enable xTuple customers to integrate e-mail messaging into their ERP systems. Please note that xTuple users should use packages provided by their vendor and not this source version.

What is Trojitá

Trojitá is a very fast and lightweight IMAP e-mail client written using the Qt library. While it is not intended for use as a regular e-mail client just yet, it could be interesting to play with it to see if the speed looks compelling to you.

What could make Trojitá interesting for you:

It's a pure Qt4 application with no additional dependencies; it builds in two-and-half minutes on a five-year-old laptop

Robust IMAP core implemented using Qt's Model-View framework

Standards compliance is a design goal

On-demand message list and body part loading ("lazy loading")

Offline IMAP support

Support for bandwidth-saving mode aimed at mobile users with expensive connection

IMAP over SSH -- instead of going over an SSL socket, the server could be accessed via SSH

Safe and robust dealing with HTML mail

Please note that the "message sending" and "message composing" features of Trojitá are a bit lagging at this point and therefore it is not recommended to use Trojitá for these tasks apart from testing.

Certain features of Trojitá depend on the IMAP server's functionality. Trojitá is written from the bottom-up as an IMAP client and is designed around its feature set. For example, threaded message viewing (ie. "conversations") is supported only if the server implements an appropriate extension for now.

Many of the optional IMAP features are not utilized at this point; there is no support for searching, for example. We have tickets opened for these, so please Cc yourself at the task tracker if you would like to follow the progress here.

Finally, as with any software, Trojitá has some bugs which are already known and reported in the issue tracker and some which are still waiting for discovery. That said, it should be safe to use to for *reading* mail. I've been doing that for several years on a production account, and I have never lost a mail with Trojitá. Please do not send e-mails with current version, though, as it is known to produce non-standard messages in certain circumstances.

Where I can get it

Our web has all the required information, but if you are impatient and just want to grab the tarball for v0.2.9, download from Sourceforge:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/trojita/files/src/trojita-0.2.9.tar.bz2/download

Trojitá is known to work on Linux, Mac OS X and Windows. It should also run on all platforms supported by Qt. Optimizations for mobile devices and the Maemo/MeeGo are in the works.

Reporting bugs and wishes

Please use the Redmine portal to report issues with Trojitá. If you do not want to be bothered by a registration, please at least send bug reports via e-mail or report them at the #trojita IRC channel on Freenode.

Community

Trojita could always use more people in the community. Areas in which people are needed most, as well as general guidelines about how we prefer to work are documented at Contributing to Trojitá.

The IRC channel is #trojita on irc.freenode.net, the mailing list is trojita@lists.flaska.net (moderation required for non-subscribers, archived at various places etc).

Acknowledgment

I'd like to thank the KWest GmbH. and OpenMFG LLC, dba xTuple for their support in delivering the exciting new features of Trojitá. Another acknowledgment goes to the helpful folks at the #qt IRC channel and the qt-interest mailing list and also to everybody who reported an issue with Trojita or tested it against another IMAP server.

All the best,

Jan