Re: [Evolution] new user impressions

[Jeffrey Stedfast <fejj ximian com>]

On 15 Jan 2001 16:14:28 -0700, Brian Grossman wrote:
> I'm a user new to evolution.  Here's my observations of the Mailer after my
> first use (v0.8).  My perspective is that of a long time exmh user.  I hope
> these observations help make evolution even better.
>
> 1. Nice!
>
> 2. Maildir support for get mail is weird.  When I told it to use
>       /home/brian/Maildir, it insisted on using /home/brian/Maildir/inbox.

You could always rename your default folder to "inbox". *shrug*

> 3. Test Settings on Maildir didn't catch that I didn't have it set up
>       as in #2.

Test Settings for local type mailboxes is a noop I think, and always
returns OK
This is in bugzilla...

> 4. Failed Test Settings for nntp took forever to timeout.

the timeout is whatever your libc set it to.

> 5. How do I change the default identity?

I've totally rewritten the config druid/editor so you should find it a
lot more intuitive now.

> 6. Gnome help browser doesn't know about mouse wheel.

it should - that's something gtk itself supports so everything written
with gtk should support it. if it doesn't, there's not much we can do
about it.

> 7. How can I delete a (local) folder?

rm -rf in the shell? :-)
Don't worry, this will be implemented at some point

> 8. Where's my vi/emacs?  I'm a lot more productive in vi than in a gui editor.

It will take a bit of work to be able to embed emacs and/or vi. We do
plan to support this but it may be a while.

> 9. Needs key shortcuts, like n for next message, c for compose,
>       f for forward, d for delete, ctrl-return for commit.
>       Pointing and clicking the mouse is not a comfortable activity.

n and p already work for next/previous. We've also got some other
keyboard shortcuts, but they may be alt-<something>. I will agree though
that we need better ones.

> 10. Needs drag-drop moving of messages.  M would be a good shortcut key.

Yea, this is also in bugzilla.

> 11. A right-click-menu in the message window would be a great place
>       for "show source", "show full headers" and "show html images".
>
> 12. Needs more detail in error messages.  For example, when my SMTP
>       server said
>       "553 sorry, that domain isn't in my list of allowed rcpthosts (#5.7.1)"
>       evolution told me
>       "RCPT TO response error: illegal seek: mail not sent"
>
>         It should tell me what the server said, at least as an option.
>         Even oe and eudora can do that.  Part of my job is to answer email
>         support calls, and evolution's response would lead me to suspect
>         a disk problem on the client or the server, while the 553 message
>         would lead me right to the problem.

The illegal seek seems wrong. Probably a bug in the SMTP code. In any
event, I suppose we could try to grab errors from the SMTP server but
not all SMTP servers give them out and it's not even required by the
spec.

> 13. It doesn't save its window size on exit.

We know, and this is a low-priority item. it will be done before 1.0
though.

> 14. I'd like to set a smaller font for the message list.

yea, yea...

> 15. What do all the icons to the left of messages mean?  Some are obvious,
>       but for example, what does an envelope with an arrow on it mean?
>       (tooltips would help)

Replied-to?

> 16. Does it support gpg and/or pgp?

Not yet but I've written about 90% of the code. It will use PGP/MIME and
will support pgp5, pgp2, and gnupg.

> 17. How can I specify a non-standard port for smtp and pop?

In the hostname entry, enter: my.host.com:37

or whatever...

> 18. Does it support smtp/pop/imap over ssl?

Not yet, but again I've written a bit of code to move in this direction.
There's a few things I need to solve first though, like: where do we get
the certificates to verify the server?

> 19. Does it support smtp auth?

No, but I'll probably be able to use the same encryption library as the
SSL code to help me code support for this at some point.

> 20. Why is there a "Don't delete messages from server" button in the SMTP
>       configuration?

Probably a bug in the old config dialogs.

> 21. I'd like to have multiple transports and tie them to my multiple
>       identities.

Again, my new config dialogs already solve this problem.

> 22. There's not an mh mail source type.  That forces me to manually convert
>       to maildir format before importing all my old mail.


I'm not sure why not, I know there is code that supports that but maybe
it's because we'd prefer not to.

> 23. Thank you for supporting maildir and mh.  Mbox format is just too
>       scary for contemplation.  The horror stories I could tell...

No problem ;-)

Jeff