Questions and Observations From a New user

[Jim Mayer <jmayer rochester rr com>]

I just started using Balsa 1.2.2 on a Redhat 7.2 system.  I compiled 
the source with default options.  I use local folders (mbox format) and 
a POP3 mail server.  I used "rpm --erase" to get rid of the Redhat 
installed version.

This message lists some bugs I've run into (new users are nasty that 
way ;-) ) and a couple of instances of behavior that I didn't like.  
Overall, I like what Balsa is trying to do... be a simple, fast, mail 
tool.

Here's are my problems/observations/questions:

(1) When I compose a new message balsa kindly wraps text for me.  If I 
save that message to the Draftbox, the text is permanently wrapped.  If 
I then go back to editing the message I end up with a mixture of 
wrapped and unwrapped text.  The mixture of wrapped and unwrapped text 
is awkward for me to work with.  I would like it better if text were 
not wrapped until the message is sent, and perhaps even better if the 
text was never wrapped at all (is there a line length limit in the 
RFCs?).

(2) When I create a new Mailbox in the Mailbox panel the Mailbox is 
created, but the display is not updated until I exit and restart Balsa.

(3) If I invoke the "Mailbox Configurator" (by hitting browse from the 
create Mailbox dialog) the starting directory is my home directory.  I 
think that my local mail directory would be more appropriate.

(4) Following up on (3), if I try to create a new directory the dialog 
box comes up frozen, will not accept input, and cannot be closed until 
the "Mailbox Configurator" dialog box is closed.

(5) The default font for the message panel is microscopic on my 
system.  The font for the message header panel is just fine.

(6) The "Message/Undelete" action does not appear to work.

(7) The key binding "^D" for delete is too easy to hit.  Furthermore, 
the same action on outlook express does a move to folder.  I would 
prefer to see the default action be rather harder to type.  I suspect 
that I can configure this, but it isn't obvious to me how, and I don't 
really care enough to find out!

(8) I would prefer to see the Cut/Delete/Past/Undo as actions that 
apply to messages in the message header window and text in the text 
window.
   (8) My "GnomeCard" address book was NOT imported automatically, even 
though it is in "~/.gnome/GnomeCard.gcrd".

(9) I was able to read the address book by going to "Settings/Address 
Books".  Unfortunately, selecting "Add/Browse" took me to my home 
directory and the browser suppresses directory names that begin with a 
period.  Since my address book is in ~/.gnome/GnomeCard.gcrd" it was 
not at all obvious how to browse there.

(10) Can the built in HTML viewer be configured to fetch and display 
images?  If so, it isn't at all obvious how.

(11) Given an message with "text/plain" and "text/html" parts, if I 
right click on the "text/html" icon I am given the choices "view this 
file with netscape," "open," and "edit."  Both "view this file with 
netscape" and "open" invoke Mozilla on my system.  If I click on the 
icon, it is opened with Galeon.  My GNOME registered default for HTML 
files is Galeon.

(12) Bringing my mail folders over from Windows land was not as easy as 
I'd hoped it would be.  I had switched from Outlook Express to Mozilla 
so I would have the messages in a format that I could manipulate, but I 
had to deal with line endings and change a bunch of invalid "From " 
lines that Mozilla used.  Basically, Mozilla uses the "mbox" mail 
format, but all the "From " lines I saw had the form:

	From - Jan 1965 00:00:00

The date part of the from line is sufficiently bogus that Balsa did not 
recognize the lines as separating messages.

(13) "Procmail" is ugly but, then again, I used MH for years.

(14) The ability to use the Gecko HTML rendering engine from Mozilla 
for high quality, in-line, HTML display would be really slick.

(15) An option to choose whether a text/plain or text/html rendering 
was preferred would be useful.

I hope these comments are helpful... I've often found that new users 
are particularly good at (re)discovering the glitches that more 
experienced users just don't see any more.

-- Jim