This application will serve as an Email and Message Board reader for use mainly with BBS services. Currently working on setting up build/release automation.
Starting this as a project as most qwk and nntp readers generally suck and/or are antiquated. Thunderbird is all but completely unusable with NNTP + Synchronet and QWK Readers are also somewhat dated, and I found multimail didn't work correctly for me out of the box.
I want a GUI based message reader for BBS message boards with a modern UI/UX. I'm using Rust on the backend to learn the language, and because I think it's a good choice, generally speaking. I'm using Tauri with a browser based UI because I'm very comfortable with browser based UI/UX and want to reduce the friction on the UI from what I will experience in learning the backend.
I will make a best effort to write clear, discoverable code. This project may or may not follow best practices. On the backend, because I'm learning as I go. On the frontend, because I'm probably going to be taking shortcuts as a faster path to done.
I probably won't try to integrate into any release prospects until after I have an MVP of NNTP and Email (SMTP/POP) at the very least. I will be testing this against my own BBS, which runs Synchronet. I may also create extended support for some services specifically with Synchronet (ANSI User Icons and Polls).
Longer term, after MVP, but before enhanced rendering I will make an effort to get updating releases into the various stores for OS use... I will likely limit Linux to Flathub and possibly Snapcraft, but unlikely to do any distro integration beyond this.
High level TODO list. Note: Anything before 1.0 can have breaking changes at any time regardless of the version.
- Release Tracking (release-please)
- React + MUI front end
- BBS Configuration Entry
- Communication to/from Rust backend
- Save/Load BBS Configuration Entries
- Figure out settings/data path(s)
- SQLite in Rust
- NNTP Group List
- NNTP Group Subscribe
- NNTP Fetch Headers/Bodies
- Display Message List (flat)
- Classic 3-pane layout
- Groups/Forums on left
- Message List on upper-right
- Message+Header lower-right
- Display Message Header
- Display Message (flat/plain text)
- Purge Old/Read Support
- Database vaccuum
- Github Release Binaries (0.5.x)
- Windows
- x86_64 (msi, exe)
- x86_64 offline (include web component, large) (msi, exe)
- Mac
- x86_64 (dmg, .app.tgz)
- aarch64 (dmg, .app.tgz)
- Linux
- x86_64 AppImage
- x86_64 .deb
- armv7 AppImage
- armv7 .deb
- aarch64 AppImage
- aarch64 .deb
- Windows
- Automated updates (0.6.x)
- E-Mail (smtp/pop) (0.7.x)
- Enhanced rendering (ansi/colors, etc) (0.8.x)
- MVP Release v1.0
- automated updates
- Will test in v0.9.x and Push 1.0 when working/tested
- Store integrations
- WinGet
- Windows Store
- Apple Mac Store
- Flathub
- Snapcraft?
- QWK Support
- FTP for QWK
- Message Attachments
MIT License