[RFC] : answering lwn.net article on Balsa

[manu <eallaud yahoo fr>]

	Hi all,
there is an article on lwn.net which reviews MUAs  
(http://lwn.net/Articles/91308/) and Balsa is part of it. The guy did  
not really like it (he used 2.0.17), and I think some he misses some  
possibilities of Balsa. Moreover now that 2.2.0 is out we should try to  
help him install it to review a more up to date version.
So here are his complaints, I put what I think should be the answer.  
Feel free to correct me.

"It can only use SMTP for outgoing mail; there is no option for passing  
a message to a local command."

OK this one is true, but I am not sure what he would like to do with  
his messages then.

"Balsa has one failing which it shares with a few other clients: it  
makes the user wait while it talks with the remote SMTP server"

This is not even true in 2.0.17 but he certainly used a non-threaded  
version (which is the only safe way for 2.0.x as it hangs too often  
with threads). But here 2.2.x experience is much better.


"Its display of multipart MIME messages is somewhat awkward; it can  
only show one part at a time, forcing the user to bounce between tabs  
to see the whole message."

I would say that this has improved in 2.2.x.

"Balsa's interface can be somewhat annoying; it can, at times (such as  
when getting a large message from a remote server), become unresponsive  
to the user, who is left wondering what is really going on."

This can still happen: if you load a big attachment from IMAP for  
example. But in general things are now much better than they used to  
be.

" The address book interface looks powerful, but it would be nicer if  
it started with a default, local book and didn't require the user to  
dig through the preferences dialog before allowing addresses to be  
saved."

This is corrected in 2.2.0.

So basically I will suggest him to try 2.2.0. I can ask him what kind  
of distro he uses and try if I can point him to some binary packages.
Bye
Manu

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