On Fri, 7 Feb 2003 16:45:38 -0800 (Pacific Standard Time) "David E. Weekly" 
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

DEW> Before I begin, let me say that I am tremendously impressed with this piece
DEW> of software, and while I'm not yet ready to switch over to its fulltime
DEW> use, it's really not far off from that point. The interface is non-clunky,
DEW> things are snappy, and no bad surprises so far. Hooray!

 Thanks!

DEW> 1) Aesthetics.
DEW> 
DEW> 1.1) When resizing the window, the window does not repaint itself. This is
DEW> awkward and visually unpleasant.

 Sorry, which window? The main one? I don't see it here (I assume you're
speaking about the Windows version, right?) except when there is no message
shown in the viewer -- then there are indeed some refresh problems. I know
about this but didn't have time to fix it as it's not catastrophic -- just
ugly.

DEW> 1.2) The carat disappears when typing text; the carat should remain solid
DEW> while the user is typing.

 The composer widget is a disaster beyond salvage and will be replaced
(probably by something less functional but maybe at least working...).

DEW> 1.3) When selecting a block of text, the carat should be at the end of the
DEW> selection, not the beginning.

 Same as above.

DEW> 2) Layout
DEW> 
DEW> 2.1) The "No recipients" bar takes up a very large amount of real estate
DEW> for no apparently good reason. The interface should be small, tight, and
DEW> polished.

 You can change the size of this zone using the splitter. Making it small
is no good because when you add a few recipients you won't see them all and
a scrollbar will appear. But, anyhow, it's up to you to choose the size you
like and it should remember it (if it doesn't, it's a bug).

DEW> 2.2) Composition windows appear to wrap text at 80 characters, but present
DEW> no visual indication of the point at which this happens. Why not open a
DEW> fixed-size window fixed to the maximum width of the message to be composed?
DEW> This would be more elegant.
DEW> 
DEW> 2.3) It is very easy to cause the word-wrapping engine to fail, outputting
DEW> lines longer than 80 characters (simply revisit a previous line and start
DEW> typing!). It may be easier to simply not do any word-wrapping at all until
DEW> the message is being sent. This is what Outlook and company do.

 See above...

DEW> 2.4) "To", "From", "CC", and "BCC" are not clearly displayed in the
DEW> composition window.

 I must admit I quite like the current design. It is rather compact and
allows to do everything quickly (from the keyboard). I don't think adding
empty "Cc:" and "Bcc:" fields is a good idea. As for "From:", it used to be
displayed only in "advanced" mode which you probably dind't activate but
now (i.e. in the latest versions) it is displayed all the time.

DEW> 3) Usability
DEW> 
DEW> 3.1) The program would ideally retain Outlook's popular key combinations
DEW> (Control-M to check new messages, Control-Enter to send a new message) to
DEW> make converting to Mahogany easier.

 I've never used Outlook so I don't even know its key combinations. In any
case, no fixed set of keys is going to satisfy everybody so it's clear that
we need a way to customize them. There is even a bug report about this.
Unfortunately I didn't time to get to it yet and probably won't soon.

DEW> 3.2) I use IMAP over SSL, as do many IMAP users. "Using SSL" should be an
DEW> option in the initial setup.

 You're right. There is not much place for it in the wizard unfortunately,
so I'll have to do some tweaking. Could you please file a "wish report"
about this in the bug tracker?

DEW> 3.3) When creating a new IMAP account, the program should volunteer to
DEW> download the folders for the account at that pointn.

 I believe that currently this happens when you try to open the IMAP folder
for the first time, doesn't it?

DEW> 3.4) Mahogany should also only display MAIL folders instead of every single
DEW> blinking file in the user's folder.

 Not Mahogany fault -- it shows everything the server shows it. So this
really is just a (mis)configuration of your IMAP server.

DEW> 3.5) The name of the IMAP master folder should be the user's mail server
DEW> name (or a user-settable name) and not "IMAP Server". Some users (like
DEW> myself) havemultiple I MAP accounts.

 The name *is* user-settable, of course, but it's true that "IMAP server"
is a bit lame. OTOH "foo.bar.baz.com IMAP server with SSL on port 7777"
wouldn't be good neither. So I think you'll usually want to rename the
folder anyhow...

DEW> 3.6) When composing, if a new IMAP message comes in, it freezes the
DEW> composition window until the new message is fully downloaded. This is very
DEW> frustrating. NEVER interrupt the user.

 I don't have this problem (and quite a few of other ones) because I use an
external editor. Of course, the only good solution for this would be to
make Mahogany fully multithreaded. This is difficult.

DEW> 3.7) Standard Windows editing key-combos (Shift-Delete for CUT,
DEW> Shift-Insert for PASTE, Control-Insert for COPY, and Control-Z for UNDO) do
DEW> not work, frustrating word processing.
DEW> 
DEW> 3.8) Drag-n-drop text editing doesn't work (not a big deal).

 See above.

DEW> 3.9) Dragging and dropping a file onto the composition window doesn't add
DEW> it as an attachment to the message. (mildly more serious)

 It would be indeed nice to have this. Could you file another wish report
for those?

 Thanks,
VZ



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