With GMail requiring 2FA after the end of May I am finally going to have to move off my homebrew system.

The reason I originally wrote my own email & news client was I became fed up of Outlook Express (remember that?) crashing every so often with a corrupt "database". I am looking at app passwords but I'm not sure I'll be able to implement them. I did find a couple of examples of code neither of which work. One was Delphi and one Lazarus.


So my question is which offline email client can handle large numbers of messages, stored in user defined folders, without becoming corrupted?


Roy Lambert

Hi Roy,

I really don't know, all I can say is that when Outlook Express started to bother me, I have changed to Thunderbird and I stick with it until now.
My opinion on software products these days is, most of them are crap.
There is an old old article about software development that explains what I think:

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/01/06/fire-and-motion/

--
Fernando Dias

On 3/24/2022 9:00 AM, Roy Lambert wrote:
> With GMail requiring 2FA after the end of May I am finally going to have to move off my homebrew system.

Why not add just add support for this in your app ?


Raul

Raul


It would mean either leaving the email on all day which I don't do, or getting a phone call every time I want to check mail. I have started looking at OAuth2 and, as I said found a couple of "non-working" examples. I might go to the google info and try and work it out from first principles, but, since I'm retired, and especially since my spam intake has dropped from 700/day to c10/week, I don't need the sophistication and as long as whatever doesn't keep crashing its a lot of effort for not much.

On the other hand, if you have a working example you could share, preferably using synapse, I'll be happy to go that route.

Roy Lambert

Fernando

Thanks


Thunderbird is currently top of my list, reading the websites of others I struggle to see what they're doing that's any better.

Quick question - what's the most emails / news articles you have in Thunderbird?

I've read a few of Joel's articles and I generally tend to agree with them.

Roy Lambert

Hi Roy

I also gave up on Outlook Express around about 2003 following crashes
and have used Thunderbird ever since.  No crashes or losses of email
since then.

I have several hundred folders for my main email account and smaller
numbers of folders for other email accounts.

Some of my email folders contain around 5000-6000 emails.  Yes, I do
prune inconsequential emails or those of short term relevance in case
you were wondering.

The only time I notice the size of the email 'database' is when I
replace my main desktop computer. ER, or when I transfer an email from
my Inbox to the 'wrong' subfolder .. now where on Earth could I have
dropped that email!!!

+1 for Thunderbird.

Malcolm

On 3/25/2022 3:28 AM, Roy Lambert wrote:

> It would mean either leaving the email on all day which I don't do, or getting a phone call every time I want to check mail. I have started looking at OAuth2 and, as I said found a couple of "non-working" examples. I might go to the google info and try and work it out from first principles, but, since I'm retired, and especially since my spam intake has dropped from 700/day to c10/week, I don't need the sophistication and as long as whatever doesn't keep crashing its a lot of effort for not much.

AFAIK you can add your app on google api portal and then add logic to
authenticate once using oauth2, store auth token (and refresh token) and
then use it for imap4 for example.

You would use refresh token to renew access token. and that one i think
can have a relatively long lifetime (months) so the 2MFA would be just
when you need to do next interactive login to get new tokens

See for example
https://developers.google.com/identity/protocols/oauth2/limited-input-device

>
> On the other hand, if you have a working example you could share, preferably using synapse, I'll be happy to go that route.


Sorry - not using synapse

However it's all basically some https requests and quick google shows
foe example this as a sample starting point (except i would assume you
would want impa4 instead)

https://en.delphipraxis.net/topic/1949-sending-email-via-gmail-using-oauth-20-via-indy/

and https://github.com/geoffsmith82/GmailAuthSMTP

Raul

Malcolm

>or when I transfer an email from
>my Inbox to the 'wrong' subfolder .. now where on Earth could I have
>dropped that email!!!

I thought I was the only one to do that <VBG>

Roy

Raul


>https://en.delphipraxis.net/topic/1949-sending-email-via-gmail-using-oauth-20-via-indy/
>
>and https://github.com/geoffsmith82/GmailAuthSMTP

Those are the one I found and couldn't get to work. I downloaded and installed the community edition of 10.4 but no joy - probably something I'm doing wrong or some component I need.

Looks like Thunderbird is go (at least for now)

Roy