Re: Find mailbox by name considered harmful

[Peter Bloomfield <PeterBloomfield MindSpring com>]

A couple of patches may be found at:

http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=84220

They reorganize Balsa's search functions, locating them in 
src/balsa-app.c, and use them here and there. In particular, searching 
for a mailbox by name is replaced with search by url for opening 
mailboxes remembered from the previous session, and, in the HEAD 
branch, for finding the original of a postponed reply (the BALSA_2 
branch doesn't yet have that feature).

The remaining uses of `find by name' are harder to replace. Two are in 
the filter code and in setting fcc_box. In both cases, the user has to 
specify a mailbox by name, and the code then looks for the correct 
internal object. This is similar to the specification of a destination 
mailbox when transferring messages, and I believe should be carried out 
in a similar way.

Balsa needs a simple widget that allows the user to choose a mailbox 
from a list of `most recently used', with the option of displaying the 
whole mailbox tree if the desired choice isn't on the list. One 
plausible widget is a GtkOptionMenu: a button that drops down a menu, 
which would list the most recently used mailboxes, and a special item 
at the bottom for popping up the tree--much like the `Move' submenu on 
the BalsaIndex context (`popup') menu. The same widget could then be 
used in any dialog with this need. It could also be used in a new 
dialog replacing the submenu on the BalsaIndex context menu--popup 
menus with submenus are frowned upon by the Human Interface Guidelines:

http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gup/hig/draft_hig/menus.html#menu-types

Comments?