Re: Again: Newbie questions/comments (Was: Re: [Evolution] Wish list/Todo ?)

[Oliver Sturm <o sturm manfred-dahlhoff de>]

On Thu, 2002-07-18 at 23:37, Jeffrey Stedfast wrote:

> [snip]
> > Well... I don't remember about Netscape, but Emacs (Gnus) doesn't, Mulberry
> > doesn't... quite sure about those. Anyhow, I think configurable key mappings
> > are not so far-out these days, are they?
>
> Outlook does. Mozilla does. Netscape does. I think Mutt does too?
>
> anyways, I can't think of a single gui client that allows you to rebind
> keys to different actions. Not to mention this is complicated to do (if
> you want to avoid conflicting keybindings that is, if you want to let
> the user screw himself, well then that'd be easy)

I don't think it's so difficult to do. A restriction of 'a key may only
ever be assigned to one action at a time' is quite easy to check
programatically and would do the job. Or if the user is assigning
ambiguous keys, tell him the key will be unbound somewhere else. Have a
big red reset button for those guys who always click OK, no matter the
message.

> > Ok, sounds like you thought about it... But that may also be a reason why
> > most other mailers I have seen display informational messages like that
> > outside the message text.
>
> yea, we could pop up dialogs but I think most people would agree that
> that would just be plain annoying. It would make me stop using evolution
> - that's how annoyed I'd be. And yea, if I'm a developer and won't use
> it, I guess I couldn't expect anyone else to :-)

I wasn't thinking about dialogs. But in mailers I have seen information
of that kind would be displayed on the status bar or some other
informational panel. Don't get me wrong, I like the way it's done in
evolution.

> > > >         * Editing templates would be nice, too... Like, I type WTF and
> > > >           the editor automatically expands it.
> > >
> > > I don't see this happening ever. but if you want to submit it as a
> > > request, file it under GtkHTML's Editor component.
> >
> > Any reason you could tell the world why you don't see this happening ever?
>
> because
>
> 1. it'd be pretty annoying (what if I really wanted WTF instead of "what
> the fuck"? I might be sending to a censored list or something).
> 2. it'd really slow the composer down a lot (having to look up a massive
> list of aliases at every keystroke would be horrible).
> 3. it'd be hard to implement. you'd have to keep a fair bit of state so
> you could revert. example:
>
> Say I have "GAT" expand to "Gone Again Tomorrow" and I type:
>
>       Today I went to the zoo and saw a gat
>
> as soon as I typed a 't', it would expand that to "Gone Again Tomorrow".
> Not only would this be annoying (wow, this is totally a perfect example
> of annoyingness), but now if I typed the letter 'o', it would have to
> undo that expansion. Anyways, not too sure about the internals of the
> gtkhtml editor, so this revert action might be quite simple to do with
> the current Redo/Undo API? Anyways, you can still see how it'd be
> annoying (which is all the reason I'd need to not implement it). And
> hopefully you can also see that this'd be extremely slow

Well, first. I didn't say this would necessarily occur on every
keypress. Have it happen if I press Ctrl-Space or whatever (maybe
configurable) and I'm perfectly satisfied. As to slow... well. I'd think
you could easily store some hundreds of those expressions in a hash
table or something and search them on every keystroke. Some restrictions
on the length of the trigger text won't hurt, so you don't have to hash
the complete message text, but only the word or two right before the
cursor. 

> > Well, think I'm a user (actually I'm mostly a programmer, but using 
> > Evolution, I'm a user). Do you think I really care about that? Sorry, I don't mean
> > to sound harsh and I certainly appreciate your time, but "not our problem" 
> > can't always be the answer if an application uses third-party components,
> > can it?
>
> I never said that. GtkHTML is maintained by ximian also, I was merely
> stating that if you submit a bug that you PLEASE submit it under GtkHTML
> and not Evolution Mail because it is extremely annoying if I have to
> reassign bugs. It takes time out of my day and means I spend less time
> hacking and more time mucking with bugzilla. So it benefits both me and
> the users if you submit it to the right place and avoid submitting a
> duplicate bug report (because either way may end up detracting me from
> getting actual work done).

No problem with that :-)

> You have to understand that the evolution team is extremely small, so
> the more time we have to spend in bugzilla means a noticable reduction
> in bugs that get fixed and features that get implemented.
>
> Sorry for ranting (and don't take it personally), but this is something
> that a lot of people just don't seem to understand.

No problem with that, either. 



                       Oliver Sturm

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