Re: [Evolution] Sorely disenchanted with Evolution (looong)

[Lonnie Borntreger <email borntreger com>]

On Wed, 2002-06-26 at 21:24, Frank Gore wrote:
> No matter how hard I try, I can't seem to ever be able to copy and paste
> things out of displayed emails in evolution (what some people call the
> "preview pane"). I've tried everything I could think of, but it never
> works. Shift-Delete, Ctrl-C, even Edit/Copy from the menu. None of it
> ever manages to copy anything. The only way I can ever get it to copy or
> cut text is if I hit Reply and copy the text out of the email editor.
> This is a HUGE drawback when I'm doing order tracking and need to
> quickly copy UPS tracking numbers into a spreadsheet or the browser.
> There's no way I'm gonna type hundreds of tracking numbers by hand
> everyday. And having to hit Reply to every email before I can copy text
> out of it is a pain. This has plagued me ever since the first 1.0
> release of Evolution. What am I doing wrong? Am I the only one with this
> problem?

This is an "X" issue, not an Evolution issue.  Ctrl-C in X does NOT copy
it to the X-Windows primary clipboard, only the application's clipboard
- if they have one implemented.  Highlighting text immediately copies it
to the X primary clipboard, but that means that as soon as you highlight
something else, it overwrites the previous.  (This is my only beef with
X-Windows in general.)  So, to copy from Evolution into your browser,
highlight the text you want to copy, then go to the browser and place
your cursor where you want to paste it (remember to NOT highlight any
new text), and then click the middle button (if you have a two-button
mouse, that means click both buttons at once).  That will paste it in.


> Along those same lines, I can never get Evolution to send from the right
> account. Once email has been received and filtered, it no longer seems
> to belong to any specific account, despite the fact that it's stored in
> seperate mail files on the hard drive. So when I reply to it, it's
> anyone's guess as to which account it'll be sent from. If my email
> address was in the To: of the original email, then it "usually" gets
> sent from that account, but that's not nearly good enough. Most of the
> email I receive isn't addressed to me, it's addressed to the company's
> customer service address. I can't be replying to customers using my
> personal account, nor do I want to be doing my private emailing from my
> corporate account. I realize that changing the From: account is a simple
> task, but I find myself forgetting to do it regularly and that's when
> trouble begins.

In each version I've ever used (I've gone though all versions by
"riding" CVS), this has worked for accounts that have different folders.
IOW, if you use multiple IMAP accounts, replying to an email in that
account's folders uses the receiving account as the sending account. 
This works in CVS even when mixing mail from different accounts in one
Vfolder.

If you have several email aliases that receive email at one "real"
account, then things work differently.  In the pre-1.0 versions, a reply
or forward would match the account based on the To: field.  Since then,
only forward does this.  This feature I miss, since I use a ton of email
aliases to help control spam.

On CVS.  You need to get the CVS HEAD version of evolution, gal,
gtkhtml, and soup.  If you want spell-checking to work, then include the
CVS HEAD version of gnome-spell.

Compile and install them in this order:
1 - gal
2 - soup
3 - gtkhtml
4 - evolution
5 - gnome-spell (optional)


I've had issues with mime-types and such if the default install
directory of /usr/local is used, so I always set the prefix to /usr - of
course this means that you need to be root to install.

Here is what I use to configure before compiling (tweak as desired).
For all except for evolution:
        ./autogen.sh --disable-nls --prefix=/usr

For evolution (setting the CFLAGS as shown makes it lighter and faster -
and impossible to debug :) - note that I don't compile the SSL layer at
all:
        export CFLAGS="-O2"
        ./autogen.sh  --prefix=/usr \
        --with-openldap --with-static-ldap=no \
        --with-gnu-ld --disable-nls --enable-purify=no \
        --enable-nntp=no \
        --with-nspr-libs=no --with-nss-libs=no \
        --with-nspr-includes=no \
        --with-nss-includes=no \
        --with-openssl=no \
        --with-openssl-includes=no \
        --with-openssl-libs=no \
        --with-movemail=no \
        --without-movemail \
        --with-db3-libs=/usr/lib

If you have any specific questions, feel free to contact me directly. 
I'd be glad to help.


> This and a few other issues have rendered Evolution unuseable for my
> corporate emailing. Not because of any major design flaws or bugs, but
> because Mozilla mail does most of these things properly. There's simply

Mozilla only does the cut-n-paste as you expect, because you are using
Ctrl-C/Ctrl-V, which is valid within that app - in this case the mail
and browser is one app.


> the ultimate emailing and scheduling suite! In the meantime, can someone
> please recomend an email and scheduling app that might fit my needs? I
> don't care if they're two seperate programs, as long as they work well

As long as your browser and email are different apps, the cut-n-paste
issue remains.


TTFN, 
Lonnie Borntreger