Wish list

["Sverre H. Huseby" <sverrehu online no>]

Hi, good people!

After playing with Balsa for a while, I came up with the following
wish list. Something for the TODO file, maybe? If not, I vote for a
WISHLIST (or similar) file in CVS, where you collect every single wish
that appears on the mailing list. Parts of WISHLIST may then creep
into TODO whenever some of the chosen ones has the time to evaluate
it. Mailing list entries tend to be forgotten...

I'm perfectly aware that there is a giant leap from making Balsa a
usable mail program to making it _the_ killer mail program. Some of
my wishes make no sense in the first case, but they may mean a lot in
the latter case. (Please tell me to shut up if I don't fit in here: I
think GNU/Linux desperately needs a mailer that makes MS Outlook
(sorry for swearing, if anybody got offended) people feel at home,
while also attracting procmail hackers and elm/exmh/mm/mutt/pine
/RMAIL/you_name_it users.)

(I previously sent most of this to Peter Williams, but as I guess it
might be of general interest, I mail it here too.)


Sverre.


* Make inlining of MIME contents optional (in the TODO), at least in
  the preview pane.

* Highlight mailboxes with unread mail (in the TODO), and include
  count of unread mails. I see that this is now partially implemented,
  but the highlight font is hard coded (no-no for a production
  release), and there is currently no unread count. Also, the mailbox
  list must be updated when needed (eg. when the user has read the
  unread mails).

* Remember size, split position etc. of composer window.

* Optionally auto-wrap lines in the composer window, so that lines are
  no longer than a user defined number of characters. Some of us still
  prefer mono spaced font and lines <=75 characters for mails. :)

* Use a user specified template for generating that "On Thu, 04 Nov
  1999 15:01:28 XXX wrote:" tag at start of citations.

* Let the user specify how all dates and times are supposed to
  appear. Ideally, this should be a global GNOME parameter, not a
  Balsa parameter. Maybe I have missed something...

* Remember last directory used in the attachment file dialog.

* Global default sort order for mails within mailboxes.

* Remember sort order selected by users for individual mailboxes.

* Let the user specify arbitrary headers that should be included in
  all outgoing mails.

* Implement drag and drop:
    * Moving selected mails to another mailbox
    * Moving mailboxes to other parts of the hierarchy

* Implement copy and paste. When testing Balsa, I found that it is
  amazing how often I want to copy parts of incoming mails (both mail
  addresses in headers, and parts of the body) to other applications.

* Shouldn't a single click on mailboxes in the mailbox list be enough
  to open the mailbox?

* Highlight URLs (and possibly mail addresses) when viewing mails, and
  do whatever seems natural when the user clicks the highlighted text.

* Add PGP/GPG support.

* Filtering: In addition to filtering (choosing a mailbox for)
  incoming mails, I would like some kind of filtering when replying to
  mails: "If the mail I reply to was sent to my address foo@bar.com,
  reply as foo@bar.com; else reply as baz@xyzzy.com". I haven't seen
  any other mail clients that handle multiple mail addresses with this
  kind of flexibility.

* To get picky: Menu items that make no sense should not be
  selectable. Example: Right clicking on any mailbox will let the user
  close the mailbox even if it is not open.


Thanks for reading...


-- 
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<URL:http://home.sol.no/~sverrehu/>