Message-ID: <43B1F203.6010401@metaparadigm.com>
Date: Wed, 28 Dec 2005 10:01:39 +0800
From: Michael Clark <michael@metaparadigm.com>
User-Agent: Debian Thunderbird 1.0.7 (X11/20051017)
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: Peter Williams <pwil3058@bigpond.net.au>
Cc: Lee Revell <rlrevell@joe-job.com>,
       Alistair John Strachan <s0348365@sms.ed.ac.uk>,
       Steven Rostedt <rostedt@goodmis.org>, Jaco Kroon <jaco@kroon.co.za>,
       linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, Pavel Machek <pavel@ucw.cz>
Subject: Re: recommended mail clients [was] [PATCH] ati-agp suspend/resume
 support (try 2)
References: <43AF7724.8090302@kroon.co.za>	 <200512261535.09307.s0348365@sms.ed.ac.uk>	 <1135619641.8293.50.camel@mindpipe>	 <200512262003.38552.s0348365@sms.ed.ac.uk> <1135630831.8293.89.camel@mindpipe> <43B1D6C6.30300@metaparadigm.com> <43B1E5C1.4050908@bigpond.net.au>
In-Reply-To: <43B1E5C1.4050908@bigpond.net.au>
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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 <pre> 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.

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.

~mc
~mc
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