email

[Alex Osborne]

On 30/09/2008, at 3:36 PM, W.Kenworthy wrote:

> Tried it - at the small screen setting and smallest I could set  
> font the
> email got only 2 -3 words per line!  Almost useless.


I guess you're not using Debian then. Here's what it looks like out  
of the box on Debian, which I suppose has a different default GTK  
theme.  I haven't changed any settings except filling in my account  
details and switching to small screen view and collapse quotes:

http://meshy.org/~ato/tmp/claws-gta02-deb.png

I'd actually much prefer a larger font.  While I can read that it's  
not all that comfortable and is particularly difficult somewhere with  
a lot of ambient light.  It's also easy to miss tap on the wrong  
email in the list as the rows are so small.  It also often drags  
instead of clicks due to touchscreen jitter.

My IMAP folder with this mailing list has 6317 messages, it took  
about 5 minutes to download them the first time I opened the folder.   
Claws was sitting at about 20% CPU, so it's likely bound by the  
network speed.  Scrolling is a little slow, but no slower than any  
other app on the FreeRunner that has to redraw a large potion of the  
screen (due to the glamo bus speed I guess).

I'd prefer a really lightweight mail viewer that you can drive with a  
finger.  Probably this would be a good use of Edje (from  
Enlightenment, what Zhone uses) as it seems a bit leaner than GTK and  
seems like it'd be easier to come up with something that works nicely  
with pen input.  Perhaps similar scrolling as Aza Raskin's Mobile  
Firefox concept video [1], but maybe scrolling out the right side of  
the screen goes to the next unread message, while out the left goes  
back.  Fullscreen scrolling is slow on the FreeRunner, but after  
testing a bit with Edje, I still find it quite usable, it just looks  
jerky.  Actually one option might be to just scroll part of the  
screen (say a quarter) as a preview and then update the rest when you  
release.  That should allow for smoother control.

The reason I said *viewer* is I'd probably just go with a button to  
pop open a buffer in Emacs for composing/replying and use a bluetooth  
keyboard, I don't think I have the patience to compose email with  
fingers or a stylus. ;-)

Cheers,

Alex

[1] http://labs.mozilla.com/2008/06/firefox-mobile-concept-video/