Re: balsa

["Jesse D. Sightler" <jsight pair com>]

Brady Hegberg wrote:
> 
> I'm confused about the Balsa version #'s.  I found a balsa rpm that billed
> itself as 0.4.9 and installed it.  Is this a valid rpm or should I install
> the 0.4.6.2 version instead?

The 0.4.9 one is probably valid.  0.4.6.2 is very out of date, as the
web page has not been updated by the author in ages.  I'm starting to
work on Balsa, myself, though, and hope to submit some new stuff for the
web page fairly shortly.  I'm also planning some work on the source, but
am still miles away from having the first clue how to do anything with
it.:)

> Also I have some bugs/requests - should I submit these to the Bug-list?  (I
> don't want to do this if I'm having problems specific to my version or system.)
> 
> 1.  When I open a new message then close it by clicking on the "X" in the
> corner the whole program disappears not just that message.

Does this happen with other apps?  I have never seen this particular
problem on my system running the most recent version of balsa, so the
only thing that I can think of is that maybe the WM is sending a kill
signal on "X" instead of close.  It shouldn't happen, but it could be. 
Or it could just be a balsa bug, so you might try updating to the most
recent CVS version of balsa, as it shouldn't require any updates to the
gnome-libs beyond 0.99.8 RPMS.

> 2.  It would be very nice if the attachments box didn't appear when there
> are no attachments.  Or at least didn't resize itself when the window is
> resized.  It doesn't leave much space for the actual message.

Agreed.  I think that this definately qualifies as a bug, and could
probably be put on the bug list.  :)  I'll take a look at it as soon as
I can figure out enough GTK+ to know how to make non-destructive
changes.

> 3.  When I try to copy a message into a mailbox I created it doesn't go and
> a little trash can appears to indicate that message was deleted.

This works fine on the version that I have, even from my IMAP folders to
other IMAP folders, so it has probably been fixed on CVS.
 
> 4.  The Balsa web-site is severely out of date.  It would be especially
> nice to have a FAQ there.

Agreed.  See my first note above.

> 5.  It would be very nice to have a place to store email address and select
> them.  It looks like there will be such a thing in the future since there
> are little address-book icons on the screen but clicking on them does
> nothing.  Perhaps a messagebox that says..."This feature is not yet
> implemented." or "There are no addresses in this address book."  would be
> helpful.

Sounds like a good idea to me.  Basically the problem is that the
address book isn't implemented yet as it is intended to use the central
Gnome address book via Corba, but not all of the hooks for that are
available yet on either end.  A notice to this effect when clicking the
buttons would probably be more intuitive at this point, though.

> 6.   Dragging a message to another mailbox has no effect.
>
> 7.  When dragging a message to a mailbox on the left side it is very
> difficult to get the program to highlight the mailbox.

Again, these seems to work fine in the CVS version.

> 8.  Basically the program crashes everytime I send mail.  (Usually after it
> sends the message.)  This leads me to suspect it might be something with
> just my machine - I mean, is this happening to other people too?

I've had this problem when sendmail was returning errors.  Basically,
the problem was that if sendmail reported anything unusual, Balsa would
just core dump, even if the message was being sent and the error wasn't
really relevant.

Could you try sending a mail from the prompt to find out?

For example, try opening a terminal and typing "mail
youremailaddress@yourdomain.com", then type in the message followed by a
single period on a line by itself.  Then watch the console for any
errors.  If there are any errors, then you probably need to fix your
sendmail configuration.

> Despite all this I like the way the program is going.  I hope that work
> continues on it to the point where it has a spell checker and such...

Yeah, it's definately good enough for government work at this point.
<sg>

Seriously, though, it has some serious bugs, but still manages to look
nice and remain useful for reading and responding to email.  Actually,
in some ways it is already better than KMail, which has been in
development for MUCH longer.

-- 
---------------
Jesse D. Sightler
http://www3.pair.com/jsight/

"Do not use a hatchet to remove a fly from your friend's forehead." 
      - Chinese Proverb