Re: [CSCMail-Users] Problem installing CSC Mail

[nick <nic...@nt...>]

On Wed, 21 Mar 2001 13:19:35 -0500, Steven Kordik said:

> Thanks!  I have kinda left the Perl install script as a low priority
>  since I
>  am focusing on the c-client based C version.  This gives CSCMail IMAP
>  support, no Database dependancies, faster at everything, NNTP support,
>  "normal" local mailstore, and other cool features. (use Pine and
>  CSCMail to
>  read the same mailstore if you like, as CSCMail can read ~/mail or
>  whatever
>  format you keep your local mail in.)
>  

The development sounds interesting.

Can I throw three usability issues into the melting pot? I'm not a
programmer, so I doubt I'll be much help fixing them, but I'm interested
in questions of usability, so I guess you can rely on me to find some
enhancements for you to think about...

1. How easy would it be to write a translator to take Outlook files -
mail folders and, crucially, the address book, and import them into
CSCMail - ideally merging them with the existing folders / address book,
since by the time CSC 2.0 is out I will doubtless have essential info in
both systems. There must be increasing numbers of people like me who're
moving to linux from Windows, and want to bring the data in our MS
applications with us.

2. The layout of panels in the CSCMail window is wasteful of space. By
giving the message window the whole of the lower panel (colspan=2, if you
like) even though messages are only 70-odd characters wide, there's a lot
of white space - at least there is on my 1600x1200 screen. Outlook has a
more interesting and useful layout, giving the folders a left hand column
all to themselves (rowspan = 2, say 20% of the available width) and then
splitting the right hand section horizontally to give the message list
above the actual message window. Can I suggest you switch to that layout?
It really is far more effective, since you don't have to scroll to see
the different folders in the list, and the message window can be as large
as possible, enabling most messages to be read in preview mode.

3. I like the colour co-ordinating quoting idea, but the line wrapping
throws it out. When a section of twice quoted text is quoted for the
third time, it pushes some text beyond the column-limit. Thus it will
show up as only once-quoted, and will therefore be a different colour.
Can you not differentiate between hard returns inserted by a user and
line wraps inserted by email software, and continue with the same colour
highlighting until you reach the end of a paragraph, even if some of the
lines appear to have fewer > characters?

Sorry if you've already considered these ideas - just things that strike
me on first impressions of CSC. On the whole, I like it, by the way. I
need to set some filters and so on, and then I'll begin to see whether it
does the job for me.

Nick