Re: [CSCMail-Users] Problem installing CSC Mail

[Steven K. <sk...@st...>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "nick" <nic...@nt...>

>
> 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.

There is already a utility that will convert Outlook mailboxes to mbox
format (which you can then import into CSCMail (all versions))  Do a search
on freshmeat.net ... I don't remember the name of the utility off hand.  As
for the addressbook format, I am not sure about importing that ... I'll look
into it...

> 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.

Actually, CSCMail 2.0 supports 4 different layout modes, (user selectable)
...
Take a look at http://www.cyberdeck.org/screenshots (for May 17th, 2000 ...
yeah, theres been a huge lapse in development) to see the 4 default view
modes...

> 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?

I plan on completely reworking the way quoting/linewrapping and so forth
works in the C version, and hope to address all of these issues.

> 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.

No problem, input is ALWAYS appreciated!

-CZ