Re: impressions of balsa1.2pre3...

[Ali Akcaagac <ali akcaagac stud fh-wilhelmshaven de>]

On 2001.09.11 07:01:12 +0200 Bojan Land wrote:
> example: resizing is somewhat difficult.  The "Unread" and "read" fields
> on the left pane are too large, why not auto-adjust them according to the
> number in the column?  I see no usefull reason why those columns should
> ever be larger than required?  In fact, why not do something like this
> instead, getting rid of columns...

no, this is a bit tricky and should be reviewed more cleanly. the problem is
if you start up balsa the FIRST time then you get a 640x480 window positioned
to your screen. now the problem is that the right area (date, size, subject
blah) field will be 640x480 forced on default so the right part with the
unread/total fields are not calculated correctly. e.g. where should that left
part go if the entire window should be 640x480 on default and the right part
of the pane is forced to 640x480 already (btw these sound like hardcoded
positions but they arent, they only work as predefined SIZES that dynamically
increases or decreases with the window beeing enlarged or shortened)

it looks for me that someone added that unread/total stuff newly into balsa
and never took any care about the rest e.g. correct sizing etc. i commited a
patch for well not exactly this some weeks ago, where the (size field on the
right) got fixed, e.g. put into calculation of the entire window, put into
prefs, load prefs etc. also it was adjusted to the calculation of 640x480 of
the right window. if this wasnt done then you probably would get a much bigger
or much crappier (unread/total) field. but thats still not the solution for the
whole stuff, since the patch fixed only EXISTING code and only the right part
of the pane window. the patch so far is necessary.

yes the left part will be hidden.. here an example

.------------------------------------------------------------------------------.
| Inbox 20 20 | #  A  S   Date   Subject   Size   From   Blah                  |
|             |                                                                |

<------------------------------------------------------------------------------>
                                  640 pixels

oki on first startup this window will become 640 pixels wide. unfortunately the
default values within the right part of the window pane

.------------------------------------------------------------------------------.
| Inbox 20 20 | #  A  S   Date   Subject   Size   From   Blah                  |
|             |                                                                |

              <---------------------------------------------------------------->
                                         640 pixels

are measured as 640 pixels now if you start balsa up the first time, it try
to adjust the right part and hides parts of the left pane.

.------------------------------------------------------------------------------.
| Inbox 20 | #  A  S    Date    Subject    Size    From    Blah                |
|          |                                                                   |

<------------------------------------------------------------------------------>
                                  640 pixels

to calculate somehow the 640 pixels.

again, the 640 pixels calculation is in no way HARDCODED values, they are only
used to arrange the right clist titles correctly. now the recently added 'size'
wasnt taken into calculation for the left pane part window so you get a even
more hidden (or bigger) unread/total window, this one is solved.

the problem is because we

a) enforce the entire window beeing 640x480 pixels on first startup
b) we just calculate 640x480 for the right part of the pane window.
c) this causes that the pane adjust itself partially over the left
   part of the window and hides unread/total

so we exactly need to fix this behaviour. its not correct forcing the entire
window to 640x480 the first time it starts up because we already enforce the
right part of the window pane to be 640x480, solution would be that the left
part (mailbox, unread, total) AND the right part (#, S, A, From, Subject,
Date, Size, Blah) should be all in all 640 pixels wide. both together. this
would lead into a correct startup window at the beginning.

if i find time i gonna fix this but as long you could enlarge that window to
1024x786 or 800x600 if you do so then it dynamically adjust to correct values.

> Inbox (5)
> Outbox
> Balsa-List (32)
> FSF-List
> Gnome (4)

evillution like :)

> the number in brackets, when present indicates number of unread messages. 
> Very simple, and very effective?
> 
> Another suggestion I had would be with dates in the subject preview pane. 
> Why not allow the user to customize the format?  Or better yet, list the
> year last, as that's the most repetative part.

yeah i know whatya wanna say, a kinda factory for this. i think that could be
implemented easily in the preferences like the toolbar factory so you can
decide what you want to see in that window and how it should look like.

> I'm sure I'll have more suggestions and if I could code to help out right
> now, I would.
> 
> I'm personally very thankfull to everyone writing this great mailer!!

-- 
Name....: Ali Akcaagac
Status..: Student Of Computer & Economic Science
E-Mail..: mailto:ali.akcaagac@stud.fh-wilhelmshaven.de
WWW.....: http://www.fh-wilhelmshaven.de/~akcaagaa