[Evolution] Evo 2.30.3 questions

[Nick Jenkins <nickpj gmail com>]

Hi all,

I upgraded my main workstation distro this morning, which upgraded Evo
from 2.28.3 to 2.30.3. It looks good, and it's great to finally be
upgrading from something two major releases out-of-date, to something
just one major release out-of-date :-) There's a couple of things that
I'm having problems with or disliking though, but I thought it better to
ask here first rather than logging requests, especially since 2.32 is
already out, and these things might have already been fixed, or perhaps
be distro-specific problems.

* Is there some application-wide way to turn off the email preview pane?
In Evo 2.28.3, I had message preview disabled, but now in 2.30.3 every
folder has the message preview turned on, which I personally am not keen
on. I can manually turn it on or off on a per-folder basis, but with
around 500-plus email folders, that's going to take a while! Either
remembering my old settings, or an app-wide way of enabling or disabling
this would be ideal.

* Previous/Next buttons versus threaded message list: As the message
list is now using a threaded view, should the previous/next buttons in
an email follow the same ordering? It feels a little odd without this,
but when I turned off threaded email viewing, then its behaviour felt
much more self-consistent. For example, if I opened the oldest message
in an old thread and pressed "next", it could be good to recap the
thread in chronological order. This gets more complicated when wanting
to read only new messages, which is presumably the most common case.
Then it's more a case of next unread message, in thread order, but
otherwise oldest to newest.

* Colour of message list focus: Can the current/highlighted message in
the email message list maybe use a different highlight colour other than
grey if it's not selected? For example, selecting a message, then
selecting the folder in the folder pane, and the message highlight is a
bit hard to notice. This is because the list of messages alternates
between white and grey, and the currently selected message is grey too,
which means that either a grey message is selected (and hard to see), or
a white message is selected (and hard to see, until you notice that
there's a block of grey, rather than an alternating colour. It does
change the text a bit too (making it lighter), but the non-active
highlighting just seems a bit too subtle in the email list. Or is this a
problem with the theme I'm using, rather than with Evo?

* Previous and Next buttons when at the end or beginning of the messages
in a folder: in 2.28, when you got to the newest message, then the Next
button would be greyed out; now it's still available, but clicking it
does nothing. Same for the previous button on the oldest message in a
folder. I kind of liked the old behaviour, because then could tell when
I was at the beginning or the end. Now it just feels like my computer is
ignoring me. I'd prefer either disabling the button, or make clicking it
close the message window, to signify that the user has got to the end of
the folder. Is this a bug, or was it a deliberate change?

* I tend to use meetings rather than appointments in the calendar (and
would prefer there was no distinction between them, as appointments to
me are just a special-case of meetings with one attendee). However in
2.30.3, when I create a new meeting called "test", then close it, then
reopen it, then close it again, I get an error that says: "This message
cannot be sent because you have not specified any recipients.\n Please
enter a valid e-mail address in the To: field. You can search for e-mail
addresses by clicking on the To: button next to the entry box." (even
though I _am_ listed as the only attendee/recipient). Then the calendar
window disappears, and then when I try to close the main Evo window, it
says "Are you sure you want to discard the message, titled 'test', you
are composing?\nClosing this composer window will discard the message
permanently, unless you choose to save the message in your Drafts
folder. This will allow you to continue the message at a later date."
I.e. the calendar meeting window disappears, but Evo still acts like
it's open. I'm certain that this used to work okay in 2.28.3.

* I can't open a specific memo folder without reproducibly causing Evo
to say "The Evolution memo has quit unexpectedly; Your memos will not be
available until Evolution is restarted". I kind of need this folder to
work because I use it to store all of my web site logins, passwords,
etc. (I'm sure I can get to the data through the file system, so it's an
annoyance rather than a disaster). Is there some way to work out what
Evo is getting its knickers-in-a-twist about? This folder displayed okay
in 2.28.3.

I know there's a lot of stuff above, so any
suggestions/pointers/comments on any item(s), individually or
collectively, are most welcome.

-- All the best,
Nick.