Re: [Logicmail-devel] Development Version

[Derek K. <dko...@lo...>]

Now that I've finally had time to look through and follow up on this, my
comments are below:
(FYI, what I refer to as "trunk" can also be known devel version, 1.9.0(X),
or milestone 2.0)

On Thu, 25 Jun 2009 13:00:29 -0600, "George Sexton"
<ge...@mh...>
wrote:
> I've been using the LogicMail 1.9.0(49) build for a while with a
Blackberry
> Storm and Courier IMAP on the server, and I wanted to give some feedback.
FYI, my personal configuration is a BlackBerry Bold on Cyrus IMAP, in case
anyone else here is curious.

> 1) It's vastly more reliable than 1.0.x and 1.1.x.
Interesting, since the low-level bits aren't that different.  Though I've
made a few minor data structure tweaks in the low-level network code of
1.1.x and trunk recently, the only real difference here is the way the
low-level code interacts with the rest of the app, and the fact that all
IMAP message referencing is UID-based in trunk, while its pure index-based
in 1.x.

> 2) I'd really love to see the subscribed folder option that's in 1.1.x on
> the devel build.
Yes, I definitely need to forward-port this one.

> 3) There should be a Delete option available from the menu when you're
> reading a message.
Will do

> 4) URLs embedded into messages are not clickable. I have preferred
message
> format set to HTML.
If you're talking about actual HTML message content, then I'll have to test
this one on the Storm simulator.  Also, I'll mention that the whole menu
handling of the HTML message field is a bit of a hack, since the API for
dealing with that isn't very clean.  However, it works on the 8800
simulator I normally use for development.  If you're talking about normal
plain text message content, then its a feature I still need to implement.

> 5) The move function doesn't seem to remove a message from the source
> folder. I selected Move from the Inbox to a sub-folder, and there are
> copies
> of the message in both places now. This is not just on the hand-held, but
> on
> the server itself.
This request prompted me to add the "Code Tags" Trac plugin to the project
website, so everyone can easily see notes I leave for myself while working
on the code.  Why?  Smack in the middle of the method that handles Move,
you'll find this comment:
//TODO: Move To Folder should delete after append

That being said, I still need to implement the IMAP COPY command, which is
the correct/safe way to handle copy and move.  Currently, the implemented
method just uses data already downloaded into LogicMail.  This works fine
for cross-account copies, but isn't really guaranteed to be an exact copy
of the original message, so I never felt comfortable using it for Move. 
Okay, so if you're not confused enough by now...  I'll make Move work
correctly as soon as I fix the Copy implementation to use IMAP COPY.

> 6) Delete doesn't work quite right. If I delete a message, it deletes on
> the
> server but the message is still shown in the Inbox. I've set the global
> configuration option to hide deleted messages. If I delete, and I have
hide
> deleted messages set, then the message should no longer be displayed.
I'll need to investigate and fix this.  Probably just a use case I haven't
tried yet.

> 7) The user interface could stand a few improvements. One suggestion that
> jumps out is handling nested folders. In order to open the Inbox, which
has
> sub-folders, I have to select the menu folder, click the Menu button, and
> then click on "Select". It would be really nice if maybe the default
action
> was to expand the folder, while pressing down the folder for an extended
> period would open it. Sort of like the way the keyboard works. You press
> the
> "s" button, and you get "s". Hold it down longer, and you get "S".
Not a bad idea, but I can also think of plenty of cases where this could
get exceptionally annoying.  (especially when INBOX has sub-folders)  So
we'll need to think about and discuss this one further.  It may also make
sense to design a somewhat Storm-specific folder tree, which actually makes
the "[+]" mark next to the folder into something independently click-able.

On keyboard devices, I'll probably want to stick with SPACE to expand,
ENTER/click to open.

> Another improvement would be to have icons for deleting, replying, etc.
> visible in the bottom of the screen when you're viewing a message.
Providing a rough visual mock-up of how this might look would be helpful. 
This is also probably something only Storm users would actually want,
unless you can think of a way to do it that would also be usable for
traditional BB users.  Heck, there may be a lot of Storm-specific usability
ideas out there that should probably be implemented.

> It would be nice if you could make some of the buttons bigger on the
> dialogs. Examples would be the delete confirmation. If you could make the
> buttons half again taller, and twice as wide, that would make them 3
times
> larger. That would be a LOT easier to hit.
This dialog is pretty much a standard BlackBerry UI popup screen, so its
really RIM's fault that it is hard to use on the Storm.  Of course creating
a customized Storm-specific version could help as a workaround.

> 8) The "Move" function doesn't work right. I can't move things to a
message
> folder that has sub-folders. For example, I have "Calendar" folder that
> contains messages, and "Errors" which is a sub-folder of Calendar. I
can't
> move the message to the Calendar folder.
Can you clarify?  Is the problem that you can't select the destination
folder, or that you can select it but the move/copy operation fails?

> 9) Attachments aren't handled. With the Blackberry mail client, I can
read
> PDFs that are attached. Perhaps this is a server-side function and the
PDF
> isn't actually rendered on the handheld.
I'm just starting to implement attachment handling.  The latest build
actually gives you the ability to save them, for example.  However, I
haven't yet implemented selective attachment downloading, or the ability to
open attachments.  Of course, you'll only be able to actually open
attachments for which the BlackBerry has a registered content handler, or
the native ability to display.

> If I pull the current code down from Subversion and compile it, is the
> Subscribed Folder handling in the repository? If not, is the patch
> available
> someplace so that I could integrate it?
The subscribed-folder thing isn't implemented in trunk yet, so the answer
is no.

P.S. While replying to this message, I've put together a little to-do list
for myself.

-- 
----------------------------
Derek Konigsberg
dko...@lo...
----------------------------