Re: Q: address lists, composition, and printing

[Berend De Schouwer <bds jhb ucs co za>]

On Sun, 18 Feb 2001 19:40:56 Andy Boden wrote:
| 
| Hi, I'm a new balsa user (about 2 weeks now), and on the whole I like the
| tool -- it certainly adds value to my life, so I'd like to start by
| thanking the development team.
| 
| Of course, any message that starts like that eventually has to lead to
| some gripes, and I'd like to float these here -- maybe somebody can
| constructively correct my misimpressions.
| 
| I have a few qustions (requests) about (for) balsa: address lists,
| composition, and printing.  I apologise in advance if any of these are
| definitively covered elsewhere and I have missed them.
| 
| 1) I want to start by asking about address lists.  The individual address
| expansion based on an address book is certainly a useful feature.  But
| just as useful is the idea of a higher-order address structure expansion
| on top of individual recipients.  For instance, text-based mail tools
| have all seemed to converge on the idea of address list expansion.  If
| you don't follow my meaning, the canonical example is the ability to
| define a local meta-address (list) in my ".mailrc" file:
| 
| >
| > alias myList bode@ipac.caltech.edu president@whitehouse.gov ...
| >

I could work on that.  The simplistic solution is to expand to
"myList (myList <bode@ipac.caltech.edu>, <president@whitehouse.gov>)",
but somewhere the 'myList' needs to be stripped before sending.

| With such a definition, mail addressed to myList is sent to all the
| adressees on the meta-list.
| 
| Am I correct that this feature doesn't exist in the balsa app?

Not if alias expansion is turned on, because that explicitly turned
multiple e-mail addresses off.  Does it exist if you go to
the addressbook, and add it that way?

| If not,
| could someone hopefully provide a pointer?  If so, could I request that
| this feature be added -- it would greatly facilitate dealing with long
| address lists in the relatively small To window in the composition tool.
| Which leads me to my next point...

Would using an addressbook be good enough, or would you like it
added in the automatic alias expansion?  Since alias expansion
depends in some way on the addressbook, that is the minimum, I guess.

Ah, and then we need LDAP support too :)

| 2) The Composition tool is passible, but I need to second (Nth) the vote
| that balsa allow the use of external editors for message composition.  In
| addition to the many features that other text editors provide, there are
| enough small differences between the balsa "emacs-like" text environment
| and real emacs to be a little annoying.
|
|
| 3) Printing.  I'm in the US, and my printers generally have letter
| (rather
| than A4) paper in them.  I see references on the mailing list about
| printing to letter stock, and I correct in understanding that to make a
| change to letter format requires a RECOMPILE to balsa?  If so, I would
| additionally request that this gets fixed _soon_.  If not, could someone
| please give me a pointer as to how to make the change, because I'm
| certainly missing the point of the existing posts on this topic.
| 
| 
| Thank you for your time in advance.  Best wishes, and congratulations on
| your successful efforts to this point.
| 
| 											- Andy Boden
| 
| 
| 
| -- 
| Andy Boden -- bode@ipac.caltech.edu
| Interferometry Science Center (IPAC/Caltech)
| 770 S. Wilson Ave, MS 100-22
| Pasadena, CA  91125
| 818/354-0225
| 
| _______________________________________________
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| http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/balsa-list
| 
Kind regards,				  
Berend                                  

-- 
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Berend De Schouwer, +27-11-712-1435, UCS