Re: recommended mail clients [was] [PATCH] ati-agp suspend/resume support (try 2)

Randy.Dunlap
2005-12-28T02:12:08Z

On Wed, 28 Dec 2005 10:01:39 +0800 Michael Clark wrote:

> Peter Williams wrote:
>
> > Michael Clark wrote:
> >
> >> Lee Revell wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>> On Mon, 2005-12-26 at 20:03 +0000, Alistair John Strachan wrote:
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>> On Monday 26 December 2005 17:54, Lee Revell wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>> On Mon, 2005-12-26 at 15:35 +0000, Alistair John Strachan wrote:
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>> On Monday 26 December 2005 14:38, Steven Rostedt wrote:
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> [snip]
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>>>> I use pine and evolution. Pine is text based and great when I
> >>>>>>> ssh into
> >>>>>>> my machine to work. Evolution is slow, but plays well with pine
> >>>>>>> and it
> >>>>>>> handles things needed for LKML very well. (the drop down menu
> >>>>>>> "Normal"
> >>>>>>> may be changed to "Preformat", which allows of inserting text files
> >>>>>>> "as-is").
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>
> >> This is also the way to do it with Thunderbird. It will do the right
> >> thing (and disables all formatting changes such as line wrapping to the
> >> inserted text) if you select 'Preformat' before pasting in a patch - at
> >> least my Thunderbird 1.0.7 does this.
> >>
> >>
> >>>>>> Dare I say it, KMail has also been doing the Right Thing for a
> >>>>>> long time.
> >>>>>> It will only line wrap things that you insert by typing; pastes
> >>>>>> are left
> >>>>>> untouched.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>> It seems that of all the popular mail clients only Thunderbird has
> >>>>> this
> >>>>> problem. AFAICT it's impossible to make it DTRT with inline
> >>>>> patches and
> >>>>> even if it is the fact that most users get it wrong points to a
> >>>>> serious
> >>>>> usability/UI issue.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Would a patch to add "Don't use Thunderbird/Mozilla Mail" to
> >>>>> SubmittingPatches be accepted? Then we can point the Mozilla
> >>>>> developers
> >>>>> at it (they have shown zero interest in fixing the problem so far)
> >>>>> and
> >>>>> hopefully this will light a fire under someone.
> >>>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> Fundamentally the issue with Thunderbird is that it line-wraps
> >>>> AFTER you compose an email, not during composition. I've never
> >>>> understood how, or why this is useful to the end user, except for
> >>>> composing HTML emails (which should be banned anyway).
> >>>>
> >>>
> >>
> >> Thunderbird will not linewrap anything that is inserted in
> >> 'Preformat' mode.
> >>
> >>
> >>>> Thunderbird is Yet Another mailer that could have been a good piece
> >>>> of software if it hadn't attempted to be a clone of Outlook Express
> >>>> (defaulting to Top Posting, HTML composition, line wrapping pastes).
> >>>>
> >>>> It's the mindset; fixing Thunderbird is probably easy, but
> >>>> convincing the Mozilla developers to include such "fixes" is
> >>>> probably much harder.
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> Should be trivial to fix, when the user puts the editor into
> >>> "Preformat"
> >>> mode or inserts a text file you surround it with tags.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>
> >> Fix the user behaviour you mean? Get them to select 'Preformat' before
> >> pasting patches into Thunderbird.
> >
> >
> > In my thunderbird, the "Paste Without Formatting" mode seems to be
> > continually grayed out (i.e. unavailable). I couldn't find anything
> > in the preferences that altered this situation. What's the secret?
> >
> I'm selecting 'Preformat' in the email compose window and using regular
> X Paste (middle button) - and it works for me (I can save the resulting
> message to a .eml and diff it against the patch and it is perfect).
> Perhaps the Debian/Sid Thunderbird has some patch? Don't know.

so where is this 'Preformat' option? I don't see it.

> Note pasting from gnome terminal does not work (as it doesn't retain
> tabs) nor does xclip work with Thunderbird for some reason. I use a
> selection in emacs and paste that.

still not good.

---
~Randy