Re: question about preferences

[Peter Bloomfield <peterbloomfield bellsouth net>]

On 05/02/2009 10:13:19 AM Sat, Ildar Mulyukov wrote:
> On 30.04.2009 23:11:20, Peter Bloomfield wrote:
> > Please keep the comments and suggestions coming--having a fresh set of  
> > eyes around is great!
>
> 	Hi Peter!
>
> If it's time to look with a fresh set of eyes (around), then you should  
> like my letters with the subject "balsa GUI problems/suggestions". Those  
> are almost 3 years old, but some things might still be up to date.

On 06/27/2006 08:04:36 AM Tue, Ildar Mulyukov wrote:
> 	Hello!
> I use balsa just a couple of weeks. I like it very much, especially
> since I reassigned some keybindings to somewhat similar to mutt's,
> which I use as well.
>
> My usage experience have shown several usability problems.
> 1. selection of messages and dragging them
> 	Imagine you select several messages in a mailbox. For that you
> use Shift or Ctrl keys. After that you release that key and mean to
> drag'n'drop them to another mailbox. And when you click for dragging,
> your selection is gone!
> I suggest this to be fixed.

So, we've had some off-list discussion of this.  Balsa uses GtkTreeView  
for the mailbox index, and that brings with it some pecularities for  
d&d--basically, if you hold down whatever key you used to extend the  
selection, d&d works, but otherwise it's a bit random--well, not random,  
but requiring some detailed documentation.  It's the native behavior for  
Gtk apps, but arguably not the best :)

Nautilus has a more user-friendly approach, in its list view.  You select  
all the items you want to move, and later you just drag them, and it just  
works.  I'm kinda clueless about how it does that, but the code seems to  
indicate some libegg involvement.

To promote portability and maintainability, Balsa has always used Gtk  
widgets with as few modifications as possible.  So the questions are:

- Should we explore libegg or other non-Gtk libs for alternatives to Gtk  
widgets with more user-friendly interfaces?

- If so, who would like to contribute some code to actually do it?

Opinions and volunteers welcome!

Peter