Re: Some hints for usability improvements

[Peter Bloomfield <peterbloomfield bellsouth net>]

Hi Mişu!

On 01/19/2006 04:23:03 PM, Mişu Moldovan wrote:
>  First of all forgive me for the blasphemy of using Sylpheed to post   
> to  Balsa's mailing list.

Oh, this is a very inclusive, forgiving, list!

> I'm using an old computer with very limited memory right now and I  
> prefer to use Sylpheed here because of the  lighter memory footprint.

Do you have statistics on the footprint?  We've tried to make Balsa  
lighter...

> Also, the latest Balsa compiled on this  oldie, but crashes on  
> startup (I'll investigate this some other day).

We had some reports of problems with old glib/gtk installations--what  
versions were involved?

> Although I still prefer Balsa 2.3 over Sylpheed 2.2 or Sylpeed Claws
> 2.0, here are some little things from Sylpheed that would (in my
> opinion) improve the usability of Balsa:
>
>  1) Balsa's message editor could use an undo history. For now there's  
> a  single level of undo and it works oddly, the cursor is moved out  
> of  place when doing an undo. Contrast this with the configurable  
> number  of undo steps in Sylpheed. (Ok, ok, maybe we don't need a  
> preference  for this, but 50 levels of undo/redo should be enough for  
> anyone,  especially if everything works right).

With current cvs, if you have GtkSourceView and configure  
--with-gtksourceview, you get multilevel undo (not configurable, it's  
GtkSourceView's default setting, which Iirc is 25).  You also get  
highlighting of /structured phrases/, and quoted line coloring in the  
compose window.

>  2) Replying to a mail with several levels of replies breaks the   
> paragrafs lines in crude ways. Granted, you may reflow manually by   
> selecting the affected paragraphs and reflowing them manually with   
> Control-R or the corresponding menu entry. But the logic of doing it   
> automatically is not so complex. Sylpheed seems to get it right (and   
> I  think it's not the only MUA to do so).

Balsa handles it when the message you're answering has format=flowed,  
which afaict is the only format that allows a MUA to know when text is  
in paragraphs that should be reflowed, as opposed to arbitrary text  
(code snippets, etc.) that shouldn't.

>  3) Balsa's spell checker is primitive. I rarely use it because it's   
> hard for me to follow it as it checks through the text. There seems   
> to  be no indication to what word is being questioned and you have to  
> guess a lot. (Disclaimer: This message is not spell checked, but at   
> work I've tried Sylpheed Claws with spell checking and it evens   
> checks  the spelling as you write).

Since 2.3.7, if you have GtkSpell and configure --with-gtkspell, you  
get, well, real spell-checking.  The spell-check option (toolbar button  
and menu item) becomes a toggle, and spell-checking is as-you-type.   
We're still working on saving the state of spell-checking when a  
message is saved to and continued from Drafts.

>  4) Balsa, please be nice and ask me before sending a mail with an   
> empty Subject header...

Yes, that would be kind!

> And also ask me about automatically  re-encoding to UTF-8 if my mail  
> contains characters not present in  the  default encoding.

The current code tries quite hard to find a charset that can handle the  
text, but yes, it could ask for suggestions before falling back on  
UTF-8.

>  5) As someone that usually reads only the new mails on several   
> folders  and subfolders in an IMAP hierarchy I frequently navigate  
> from one  new  message to another using the Ctrl-N shortcut. When  
> there are no new  messages in the current folder I have to manually  
> switch to a folder  with some new mails to continue reading them.  
> Sylpheed does what I  mean and asks me if it should change  
> automatically to the next new  mail in the next subfolder in my IMAP  
> hierarchy. True also for other  MUA's.

Maybe pop up a dialog saying "Next unread message is in %s" with "OK"  
and "Cancel" buttons?

>  6) In both Sylpheed MUA's it's possible to set up the folder pane to  
> only show the folders and the number of new mails in parantheses   
> along  side the folder's name. No need to display the whole list of   
> statistics just to see how many new mails you have in a specific IMAP  
> sub-folder. As a side note, I got to distrust the new status of IMAP   
> subfolders in Balsa especially with some (maybe broken) IMAP servers   
> like Exchange.

Yes, that would be a useful option.

> 7) Sylpheed Claws manages to briliantly organize the multitude of
> options from Sylpheed preferences in a window with chapters and
> subchapters on the left side (no more sub-tabs in a tab of the
> Preferences window).

Is that a custom widget?  I don't know of a Gtk widget that would do  
that...

> I'm sure I forgot some other issues, but it's late and I'm getting
> tired. I'll save them for some other time. And please take everything
> with a grain of salt, I wrote about options and shortcuts without
> actually checking them one by one so I may be wrong in some cases. It
> may be also that Balsa has some (unknown to me) ways of dealing with
> the above issues. If so, please let me know of any workarounds, they
> will probably help others too.
>
>  After using also Mozilla Mail, Thunderbird, Evolution and Mutt I   
> think  all mailers suck. But for me Balsa sucks less, that's why I'm  
> still  using it on two other computers daily. I really like it's  
> elegance  and  hope for even more refinements.

...and we thank you for the suggestions--Balsa, the refined mailer,  
that's our goal!

Best,

Peter