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

Michael Clark
2005-12-28T03:28:32Z

Peter Williams wrote:

> Randy.Dunlap wrote:
>
>> 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.
>
>
> Nor me.
>
It is a drop down box in the Compose window just below the subject field
on the left (intially says "Body Text").

If you haven't got the rich text Compose enabled (not sure how you
disable/enable this but it was an option in Mozilla Mail) you can hold
down shift when you click 'Write'.

I'm running Debian/Sid Thunderbird 1.0.7 BTW.

~mc