Re: [Columba-users] Initial feedback on 1.4 from a new user

[Frederik D. <fd...@co...>]

On 5/25/07, Andrew S. Townley <as...@ar...> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> I just wanted to provide some immediate feedback as a long-time
> Evolution 1.4.x user.  I have to say that I'm extremely impressed with
> what I see so far.  It's got almost all of what I would expect from
> Evolution, and you can actually make the folder view not always
> visible!!! :)


Hi Andrew,

thanks for trying Columba. Just wanted to let you know that we had a
harddrive crash on our webserver. Everything seems to be running stable
again, including the website and nightly builds. But, we still have problems
with Jira (issue tracker) and Confluence (wiki). It seems to be related to
our database. I hope to have some more time again next week to investigate
what's causes these outages.

I can code, but I'm not sure how long it will be before I can contribute
> anything meaningful.  I've also got some ideas for building some
> plugins/extensions for another project that I'm working on, but I needed
> to find a working email client--I didn't want to start from scratch.
>
> >From a usability/configuration point of view, I think there are some
> minor things that would make it a bit better:
>
> 1) One thing that is handy in Evolution is that you can do various list
> types in plain text via the toolbar.  I don't know if you want to do
> this or not, but since I'm typing a numbered list, this would be nicer.
> :)


In plain text type? I was only aware of this when writing HTML messages.
Are you refering to the RTF  type messages?

2) The default window sizes are quite large.  Is there an easy way to
> make them packed instead of being the width of the screen (or nearly
> so)?  On a 16:10 monitor, they're huge windows.  Part of this is
> inherent in Swing, but part of it could be fixed, I think.


We currently use the screen size and scale it down  to about 95%.  That was
until know the best approach because it looked good with even the smallest
screen sizes. Nowadays we could actually try a 1024x768 size as default.

Update, after opening the draft version of this mail, it was as wide as
> the screen.  I think there needs to be an option to remember the size of
> the message compose windows.
>
> Update 2:  it seems that after the first time, it remembered the window
> size.  Not sure what is going on with that.


I've encountered the same issue here. The first time it is a hugh window. It
should be very small actually! So, this is a bug.

3) One of the things with sorting in Evo that's actually kind of nice is
> the 3-way function.  It will cycle through
> ascending/descending/"natural" order.  This is pretty useful for mailing
> lists where you can get delays in delivery of messages.  I don't really
> think it would take much to add.


We currently don't support the "natural" order, which is basically, the
order in which message "arrived" in folders. But, that shouldn't be hard to
add, as its simply the messages as they are stored without any sorting
applied.

4) Maybe this is a known bug, but the "Edit Signature..." button doesn't
> work for me on linux
> $ uname -a
> Linux excalibur 2.6.18.8-0.3-default #1 SMP Tue Apr 17 08:42:35 UTC 2007
> x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
> $ java -version
> java version "1.6.0_01"
> Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.6.0_01-b06)
> Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 1.6.0_01-b06, mixed mode)


It works for me last time I tried. But I remember there were problems in the
model->ui update and one hard to close and open a new composer window to
make it work correctly.The good news is that I've cleaned up most of the
composer's underlying model code which should make these problems very easy
to fix.

5) One thing that I was initially hoping for was automatic segregation
> of email accounts into separate folders.  Columba has the same behavior
> as Evolution where it dumps all mail from all accounts into the same
> folder.  If there's a way to change it, I didn't see it yet.  I know
> this is what some people would want, but I personally have a number of
> mail accounts (business and personal) that I use with the same email
> client.  Is there a good solution for this type of usage?


This works in fact as designed.  For each account you can find actually all
the folder configuration in account.xml. This includes drafts, templates,
trash, etc. As far as I remember it doesn't support Inbox though. So, you
can't make this work they way you want it without actually refactoring this
a bit to make it flexible enough.

6) The auto spellcheck as you type is something that I'm sure you're
> working on, but since nearly all other clients do it, it is something
> that a lot of people would expect.


This is a must, I'm waiting for someone to look into this now for two years!
So, feel free to give this a try ;-)

7) As a long-time Evolution user (over 6 years), it would be nice to
> have the tree work like a pop-up tree.  I know they took it out of
> Evolution 2, but it is handy when you're trying to keep the windows
> compact.


This looks like something the docking framework could solve.

8) It would be nice for when the window as minimized to display the
> number of unread messages in the current folder in the title bar.  I use
> this quite a bit because I normally run with my mail client minimized.
> I think the count should be there all the time if there are unread
> messages, but it is really useful when it is minimized.



This is something students worked on for some time but they never actually
commited the sourcecode changes. Anyways, this is a nic feature I would most
probably use myself.

Please don't take this feedback as negative.  I'm actually pretty
> pleased to find the project.  I've a couple of other things, but I'll
> post them to the developer list.


It is always nice to hear some feedback! Lets hope we get the issue tracker
running quickly again, so this things don't get lost!

Best regards,
-Frederik