Re: [Geary] Great stuff!

[Robert Schroll <rschroll gmail com>]

On Tue, Dec 2, 2014 at 7:53 PM, Jo-Erlend Schinstad 
<joerlend schinstad gmail com> wrote:
> So far, it seems pretty impeckable to me, although I'd personally 
> choose to always go with curly brackets, even for one-liners. But 
> that's just a style and I don't have to agree with it in order to 
> compliment your great source.

If you haven't seen it yet, the Yorba style guide [1] is invaluable for 
keeping everything looking pretty, especially when you get to a switch 
statement or other more obscure form.  I'm pleasantly surprised how 
much of it agrees with my prejudices.  (Although continued lines that 
end with an open brace should be indented two tabs, not one!)  You'll 
be happy to know that it accepts curly brackets around one-liners, so 
you don't have to change your ways in your patches.

> As the product goes, there are a few things that annoy me and which I 
> won't be able to patch for some time. One is that logging into GMail 
> will give you a "wrong password" error when in fact you've chosen the 
> right password for the account, but not the right App Password. This 
> error message should include a hint and a link to the user that 2FA 
> might be in use and that you might need to set an app password. This 
> could easily be improved by including a link and a better text.

This would not be a bad place to do a first patch, if you're interested 
in doing so.  The relevant code starts around line 725 in 
src/client/accounts/add-edit-page.vala.  I see that it already depends 
on the account type, so adding text specifically for Gmail would be 
relatively easy.

> The rest of my unrest are matters of insignificant importance. There 
> are a few theming issues with the accounts dialog and it's annoying 
> to have to scroll up to the top of a post in order to post a reply. I 
> think there should be a few one-click icons at the lower-right of 
> every post in the beginning.

There's a similar bug already in the tracker [2].  You may want to 
comment there, if for no other reason than to bump its visibility.

BTW, in master we're experimenting with a new behavior we're calling 
"select-replies".  If there is text selected, replies triggered from 
the toolbar buttons or the keyboard shortcuts will be to the message 
with the selected text.  Only the selected text is quoted in the reply. 
It's still a work in progress; here's an open bug if you're interested 
[3].

> Of course, I have lots of things I'd like for future versions, such 
> as signed and encrypted emails,

This is oft requested [4], but no-one's attacked it yet.  Handling 
encrypted emails makes me nervous, since there's so many ways to mess 
up and expose private information.  But signatures seem like they 
wouldn't be as bad.

> As a lover of Vala and GTK+, clean code and KISS, this is the best 
> product I've seen in ages and I hope to be of some use to you as I 
> learn.

Thanks for the kind words!  I think just having a fresh set of eyes 
looking over Geary would be very helpful.  I'm sure there are warts 
that I've become to inured to and no longer notice.  When you see them, 
please point them out!

Thanks,
Robert

[1] https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Geary/CodingConventions
[2] https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=713723
[3] https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=738188
[4] https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=713403