Elm is a text-based
email client
An email client, email reader or, more formally, message user agent (MUA) or mail user agent is a computer program used to access and manage a user's email.
A web application which provides message management, composition, and reception functio ...
commonly found on
Unix
Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, ...
systems. First released in 1986, it became popular as one of the first email clients to use a
text user interface, and as a utility with freely available
source code
In computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of code, with or without comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a program is specially designed to facilitate the ...
. The name ''elm'' originated from the phrase ''ELectronic Mail''.
Dave Taylor (currently with Intuitive Systems) developed elm while working for
Hewlett-Packard
The Hewlett-Packard Company, commonly shortened to Hewlett-Packard ( ) or HP, was an American multinational information technology company headquartered in Palo Alto, California. HP developed and provided a wide variety of hardware components ...
.
Development later passed to a team of volunteers. The latest () public release was version 2.5.8 in August 2005.
Other popular text-based email readers which followed elm and took it as an inspiration include
Pine
A pine is any conifer tree or shrub in the genus ''Pinus'' () of the family (biology), family Pinaceae. ''Pinus'' is the sole genus in the subfamily Pinoideae. The World Flora Online created by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and Missouri Botanic ...
(1989) and
Mutt (1995). From about 1995 elm slipped in popularity and functionality, and it now sees relatively little use.
Bill Pemberton of the
University of Virginia
The University of Virginia (UVA) is a public research university in Charlottesville, Virginia. Founded in 1819 by Thomas Jefferson, the university is ranked among the top academic institutions in the United States, with highly selective ad ...
currently maintains elm. A former Elm Coordinator was Sydney Weinstein from the Myxa Corporation.
Release history
To get an idea of the period when elm was used and developed, this is a list of major.minor releases, included the last patch level.
* 1986-11-30 first release?
* 1987-03-08 elm2
* 1989-04-12 elm2.2
* 1990-12-16 elm-2.3.0
* 1993-01-05 elm-2.4
* 1996-01-26 elm2.4.25
* 1999-03-24 elm2.5.0
* 2004-05-21 elm2.5.7
* 2005-08-18 elm2.5.8
Unofficial versions
Volunteer developers have forked the Elm code several times, producing modern versions of Elm with fixes and enhancements not in the official development branch. Among the more popular of these distributions are Kari Hurtta's "Millennium Edition" Elm 2.4 ME+ and Elm ME+ 2.5, both of which build upon Michael Elkins' extensions of Elm 2.4.24.
See also
*
Comparison of email clients
The following tables compare general and technical features of notable email client programs.
General
Basic general information about the clients: creator/company, O/S, licence, & interface. Clients listed on a light purple background are no long ...
*
Text-based email client
A text-based email client is an email client with its user interface being text-based, occupying a whole terminal screen. Other kind of email clients are GUI-based (cf. email client) or Web-based, see Webmail.
Text-based email clients may be ...
References
External links
Elm homepageThe current official version of Elm
(source code tarball)
elm packages on funet.fiElm ME+ homepage
Email client software for Linux
Termcap
Software using the BSD license
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