Re: IMAP bugs

[Jules Bean <jules jellybean co uk>]

On Wed, Feb 14, 2001 at 03:15:37PM +0100, Pawel Salek wrote:
> 
> On 2001-02-14 14:40 Jules Bean wrote:
> 
> > When it opened the inbox, it went straight to the oldest unread
> > message, and of couse displayed it in the preview pane.  This wasn't
> > quite what I wanted -- I mark messages as unread again when I want to
> > remember to deal with them later; so it was annoying to have this one
> > marked read. (Not really a bug, more of a usage problem; I'm open to
> > suggestions on a different way of doing things which would help).
> 
> I think there is an option to disable this in Preferences
> ("Automatically view message when opened").

Cool.  I'll have a look at that.

> 
> 
> > I tried to new IMAP folder support (this is really important to me; I
> > have 60 IMAP mailboxes or so, and new ones appear all the time). 
> 
> Thanks for your feedback on it: IMAP folders scanning conde definetely
> should handle better authentication/connection problems. I am still not
> quite happy with it, both frontend- and backend-wise. I focus myself on
> the backend first because I have just one life. 

Fair enough ;-)  You're making superb progress, anyhow.

> 
> > Logging back in to balsa and setting the password correctly on the
> > folder, I can get further and browse through my folders. Nice.  It
> > still feels very clunky (I have 112K ADSL) because there is no visual
> > feedback while the networking happens.  I would suggest, as a minimum:
> 
> CVS version prints "Opening mailbox XXX. Please wait..." and keeps UI
> active (as long as you don't hit global mutt lock; see discussion
> later). I think it should not be difficult to add some kind of progress
> bar, too. It would be pretty straight-forward to do the same for opening
> mails, with the same problem as for opening mailboxes.

Right.

> 
> > 2) Change the curser to a clock or hourglass or something.  (Better
> > still, a progress bar down in the bottom of the window).
> 
> I personally dislike programs playing with the mouse pointer,
> particularly when they crash and leave it in some strange shape :-).

There's no need to play with the mouse pointer, if you keep the UI
active.  But in the 1.1.1 code, where fetching mail is essentially
modal, it makes sense to do something to tell the user he can't do
anything ;) Obviously a progress bar/ the ability to keep on working
is much better.

> 
> > It also seems impossible to delete IMAP folders without editing .balsa
> > by hand.
> 
> This will come as soon as I get the backend cleaned.

Cool.

> 
> Many of the existing deficiences come from the fact that we have one
> global lock for mutt. Because of that, opening one mailbox while
> composing/sending mail is not really possible: opening mailbox keeps
> mutt mailbox held and sending will lock until it is released. We could
> probably introduce lock timeouts and return TEMPORARY_ERROR codes but I
> think we have more serious problems now to solve than to make balsa
> ultra-threading.

"ultra-threading"?

Certainly some finer-grained locking would be nice. One thing I'd
definitely like to be able to do is browse my mail while it's checking 
for new mail.

Jules