Re: [Logicmail-devel] Some CJK issues and how to contribute

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

Sorry it took me so long to respond, but this has been a busy week in my real 
job.  I'm hoping to spend some serious full-time effort on LogicMail when 
everyone takes their holiday vacations at the end of this month, so hopefully 
the pace will pick up then.

Quick note:  When I refer to "Version 2.0", I'm referring to the code 
currently in development on "trunk", often tagged as "1.9.x" in the automated 
builds.

> -- Prompt 'This message does not contain any sections that could be
> displayed' when I try to open some mail containing Chinese text.
There are a lot of variables that could be involved in this.  Is the Chinese 
text encoded with Unicode, or something legacy like GB2312, or something else?  
Unicode is easy, GB2312 currently only works on East-Asia localized 
BlackBerries that understand the character set, and anything else requires 
LogicMail to actually contain a charset translation table.

> -- I'm quite interested in 'offline' access mode of IMAP, which is lack in
> current version obviously.
And is definitely going to be a major feature of the new version.  There are a 
lot of little details of the offline caching to figure out, but I'm currently 
focused on getting the basics working.

> -- UI: Two much steps for setting email account. Why not combine incoming
> and outgoing server settings in one window, just like outlook or other
>  email clients do?
Actually, other e-mail clients do separate it.  They just often provide it all 
in one place so you don't notice.  Version 2.0 does include a setup wizard 
that will make this easier.  The configuration screens for version 2.0 are also 
being improved a bit, though the overall structure hasn't changed yet.

> -- UI: battery and radio signal icons' layout are not so comfortable, can
>  it consider to use system ones? Gray and black instead of blue and green?
I can't use the system ones directly.  What I have to do is copy the system 
ones, and implement something myself that looks exactly the same.  That being 
said, I agree with you and the look of this could probably be improved.  
Though the icons are different for devices running OS 4.5 and lower, versus 4.6 
and up, so I'd either just use the 4.6 icons or include two versions of them.

>  -- UI: Essential text formatting tool: like bulleted list, Bold & italic
>  tools, etc.
Here you're basically asking for the ability to write HTML e-mail.  I've 
honestly never even considered this feature, and creating a fancy-formatting 
message editor field would be a lot of work I probably don't have time for.  
However, if you were interested in working on such a thing, I'd gladly take 
the contribution.

> -- CJK testing is quite necessary (Chinese, Japanese and Korean)
It definitely is, and its something I can't do without the help of people like 
you.  Same for localization (currently only have Chinese).  Another language 
often forgotten in the mix is Vietnamese, which I've also included some 
support for.  (the whole "Unicode normalization" option to deal with BB font 
limitaitons which are finally fixed in OS 5.0)

> I'm currently using LogicMail v1.1.0 on my BlackBerry 8310.
Which BlackBerry OS version are you running?  I'm guessing its either 4.2 or 
4.5, but I could be wrong.  The whole BlackBerry UI actually got a bit of a 
makeover in 4.6, and each new version includes more features.  I'm still 
undecided where the cut-off for LogicMail 2.0 will be.  Its currently 4.2, but 
could creep up to 4.5.

> I'm wondering how to join and make my contribution for the testing and dev.
> I saw Derek's answer in one thread dated 2009-11-25, is that the
> instructions I need follow?
I rewrote the instructions on the developer info page on the website to match 
what I put in the e-mail.  George hasn't written anything back since then, so 
I'm not sure whathe's up to.

http://www.logicprobe.org/proj/logicmail/wiki/development

-Derek

On Wednesday 16 December 2009 11:51:46 pm OTA Ware wrote:
> hi all,
> I've been used logicmail for a couple of days. I've found the following
> issues might be interesting for the development:
> -- Prompt 'This message does not contain any sections that could be
> displayed' when I try to open some mail containing Chinese text.
> -- I'm quite interested in 'offline' access mode of IMAP, which is lack in
> current version obviously.
> -- UI: Two much steps for setting email account. Why not combine incoming
> and outgoing server settings in one window, just like outlook or other
>  email clients do?
> -- UI: battery and radio signal icons' layout are not so comfortable, can
>  it consider to use system ones? Gray and black instead of blue and green?
>  -- UI: Essential text formatting tool: like bulleted list, Bold & italic
>  tools, etc.
> -- CJK testing is quite necessary (Chinese, Japanese and Korean)
> 
> I'm currently using LogicMail v1.1.0 on my BlackBerry 8310.
> 
> I'm wondering how to join and make my contribution for the testing and dev.
> I saw Derek's answer in one thread dated 2009-11-25, is that the
> instructions I need follow?
> 
> otaware
> 

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