On 4 Apr 2012, at 5:11, Baron Fujimoto wrote: > I'm evaluating MailMate as replacement for the venerable Alpine and > Mutt > MUAs I've been using. I apologize for what will probably be a slate > of > basic or clueless questions as I try to map the workflows I'm familiar > with > from those MUAs to MailMate.
Thanks for considering MailMate as a replacement. Questions are always welcome. > One preference that has become ingrained is their modality of these > older > MUAs. I like being able to navigate a mailbox message in a primary > screen > or pane, then selecting a message and having its contents displayed in > place > of the index. Most GUI mail apps seem to use the three pane model for > mailboxes/folders, index, and message. The closest I've come with > MailMate > to approximating the modal style is to "Hide Message View". I can > sort of > further kludge it by sizing and positioning a selected message's > window over > the index, but that's far from optimal. For example, the index > navigation > keys don't seem to be active while the message display window has the > focus. The mailbox window and the message window are completely separate and do not share any state. I guess it could be possible to somehow link two windows, e.g., making the mailbox window part of the responder chain of the message window, but it would not be standard Mac OS X behavior and it would also raise some questions with regard to GUI feedback and how to behave when multiple mailbox and message windows are in play. I could probably see how this could work, but since it all starts with a kludge (overlapping windows) then it does not really look like a promising solution for you. > Is there a way to configure what I'm after here? Alternately, would > this > be a feature request candidate? Or is this just too different from > the way > MailMate works as to be infeasible and I just need to adapt to the new > way > things work? You cannot configure it as it is now. I've used Pine many years ago, which means I think I know what you are looking for. You want ?Open Message? to hide the mailbox list and message list and then only show the currently selected message in the window, but all keyboard shortcuts should still work as if the message list was present. Pine also hides the mailbox list when going into a mailbox, but I guess that is not the important/relevant part. If implemented this would require the GUI to include an indication of the current mailbox (and/or search) and some way to exit the message viewing mode. I cannot promise you such a feature any time soon, but it is a feasible feature which I'll keep in mind. -- Benny
