Re: [Evolution] A composer bug and a suggestion

[Larry Ewing <lewing ximian com>]

On 16 Jan 2001 02:28:23 +0100, Janne wrote:
> I'm running the latest snapshot (from the 14:th) from Ximian. The bug
> first: open the composer, tab down to the subject line, tab again to go
> to the composing area. The composer will catch that tab, insert it at
> the beginning of the message, then refuse to delete it.

This is due to the way the composer translates a tab into a <blockquote>
element.  To get rid of the <blockquote> behavior, hit the unindent
toolbar item. I think we may change this behavior because it definitely
violates the principle of least surprise.

> The suggestion: I've experimented with using the html style stuff
> writing a non-html mail. The list stuff gets translated as best it can
> (and it _is_ good). Most other stuff, like colors, bold/italic,
> headings, etc. cannot of course be translated. I was thinking, though,
> that maybe the center/align right could be translated; all that would be
> needed is to assume a definite line length of the non-html text (78 has
> been more or less standard for years), and pad those lines with space as
> needed. Is this an idea worth pursuing? A more ambitious version would
> be to allow customisation of the translation, so that you, for instance,
> could choose to mark text as _bold_ or BOLD or /italic/ or --header 1--,
> etc for ascii mails.

Center and align I plan to get to very soon.  Tables also need a lot of
work.  I have planned to go back and flesh out the text exporter for a
while I have just been caught up with other stuff.  I'm not so sure
about the other markup because it seems like it would be relatively easy
to make html that rendered nicely in graphics but looked horrible and
confusing in text/plain and that is something I'd like to avoid.

--Larry