A Bat-fellow, Januk Aggarwal,
wrote on Tuesday, September 19, 2000 at 5:11:46 CET --
>> Sorry, I need to add my customary complaint here. How come there
>> are four darned *buttons* available, but (once your cursor is
>> located in the preview window) there are no keyboard shortcuts that
>> allow you to move up or down the message list?
JA> I'm not sure I understand, what buttons are available, and what do
JA> they do (or not do)?
I sure don't know what buttons are available because I don't use any
toolbars and I removed all of them from all the Bat! screens. If
there's something I hate it's toolbars. In applications that you only
use once a week they're handy but with one's favourite everyday (or
even every-hour) tools they just get in the way. A great program
should offer the complete range of keyboard shortcuts for each and
every command present in the program, and each of these keyboard
shortcuts should be configurable by the end user, not by the
programmers. The Bat! has a way to go here, to reach that end. But
none of the mail clients (except Pegasus) is as close to reaching this
keyboard shortcuts paradise as The Bat! is.
That totally configurable keyboard shortcuts are very well possible is
proven by such magnificent applications as EditPlus (South Korea),
TextPad (British) or, of course, Microsoft Word.
Thank heavens you can at least get rid of all toolbars in The Bat!,
even though keyboard shortcuts only work with about 50 % efficiency.
As to details about toolbars, please ask Allie who was explaining
something to Karin.
JA> They work as they should here. CTRL-C copies the selected text to
JA> clipboard, and CTRL-V pastes from the clipboard. Of course CTRL-V
JA> will not do anything in the Preview Window or in the reader window
JA> since the text is read only. What have you tried doing that
JA> doesn't work? What were you trying to do?
I wrote this to the list before -- please bear with me, those who've
already read this. When the cursor is located in the message preview
window, THE two keyboard shortcuts that I need most in that very
message preview window, are disabled. Namely, Go to Next Message =
CTRL+ARROW-DOWN (is disfunctional), and Go to Previous Message =
CTRL+ARROW-UP (is disfunctional as well).
Why? If they can function in the reader window, shouldn't they
function in the preview window as well? Even Outlook Express employs
this feature cleanly and logically. But The Bat! doesn't give a damn.
The same goes for moving or copying messages. (Moving or copying the
entire message, not a selected piece of text.) Once the cursor is
located in the message preview window, or *even in the main reader
window*, the keyboard shortcuts CTRL+V (Move Message to Folder...) or
CTRL+C (Copy Message to Folder...) are disfunctional.
Once again, I sorely need these two commands precisely in those
preview or reader windows, *not* really in the message list window
where the shortcuts are currently functional.
You're right, Januk: CTRL+C and CTRL+V are standard Windows shortcuts
for copying and pasting clipboard text. Alright, so let the
programmers choose CTRL+W or CTRL+Q, for all I care, to enable moving
or copying the entire message.
Two pairs of fully functional (ie. working in each window throughout
the application) keyboard shortcuts are absolutely essential here. One
pair, for moving or copying an entire message. The other pair, for
jumping to the next or to the previous message in the message list,
always *without* having to take the cursor out of the message preview
/ reader window!
Of course, the ideal thing would be, as in EditPlus or MS Word, if
each user could configure his or her own keyboard shortcuts, for each
and every command in The Bat. This really shouldn't be too difficult
for the programmers to enable. Twenty years from now we'll all be
laughing at the fact that there used to be a time when this was *not*
possible. However, I'd rather not wait that long. 8-|
In Outlook Express, the four keyboard shortcuts (unlike in The Bat!,
in Outlook they are fully functional throughout the application) are
CTRL+>, CTRL+<, CTRL+SHIFT+V and CTRL+SHIFT+C. Typical Microsoft, too
many keys for simple commands that you use (that I definitely use)
every other minute.
Pegasus is the king of them all in this respect: press a *single* key,
M, for moving a message to a chosen folder, or press C, for copying a
message to any folder! Press the + key (even on the numeric keypad) to
jump to the next message in the message list (even when the message
list isn't displayed at all!), or press the - key to jump to the
previous message.
Please, Bat, learn from Pegasus!
--
Yours,
Alex. of Slovakia
[flying with The Bat! 1.46 Beta/6
under Windows 98 4.10 Build 2222 A
amd k6-2 500 mhz processor with 64 mb ram]
--
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