Re: Unidentified subject! (Two Balsas crash)

[Peter Williams <peter newton cx>]

On Tue, 07 Dec 1999 12:03:56 Jules Bean wrote:
> On Tue, 7 Dec 1999, David Pickens wrote:
> > On Tue, 7 Dec 1999, Jules Bean wrote:
> > Even
> > established text mail clients like Pine don't handle multiple instances
> > particularly well.  From a logistical point of view, I wonder if splitting
> > balsa into a server/client (libbalsa/libmutt -- balsa) model app. is worth
> > the effort considering the limited 'gain', especially while evolution is
> > in development.  Even creating a read-only mode would be pretty
> > time-consuming, and the version that's operating read-only probably
> > wouldn't see new mail, or allow the user to compose new messages (as these
> > would be copied to sentbox, etc.).  
> 

I'm flogging a dead horse, but maybe I'll add something new. At least
I want to explain why I think Balsa not supporting multiple instances
is reasonable.

IMHO major structural changes like that should not be made to Balsa
(multithreading excepted); Evolution is what they're for. Multithreading 
greatly increases the usability of Balsa (again IMHO) at relatively small
cost in terms of time spent rewriting and moving things.

Anyway, multiple instantiation has nothing to do with the OS. How many times
have you had multiple X connections to the computer with your mail? Balsa
is not, as was said, a 'widget' like grep. If there was some libemail that
did everything it would *have* to support multiple instantion; camel will.
Balsa is not that library.


> There may, or may not, be other solutions to this.  (Superficially, just
> flock()'ing the mailboxes should be enough, but I haven't thought it
> through carefully). In any case, I'm not going to use balsa as a local
> mail reader, I'm going to use it as an IMAP reader, and IMAP *does*
> support multiple concurrent connections. [even though, as you say, PINE
> doesn't very well]. It would be foolish to deny balsa users IMAP's
> functionality, unless there's a good reason.
> 

I believe with David Pickens' multithreading one would not need multiple
instances of Balsa to check an IMAP account (or accounts) concurrently.

> > 
> > IF what you want is the ability to view two Folders/Mailboxes at the same
> > time it might be better to add that to balsa at some point.
> 

Unless I'm misunderstanding your example, Balsa can already do this. Well,
you can't view the indices of two folders simultaneously, but you can have
as many folders as you want (until it crashes :-) open at once.

==============================
Peter Williams peter@newton.cx