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Re: [tlug] [OT] email client tips?



On 2014年04月25日 07:41, Darren Cook wrote:
One of the delights of moving from Ubuntu to Mint/xfce, for me, was that
Thunderbird was the default mail client; so I no longer needed to
uninstall Evolution and all the tendrils it had tied into the OS.

Great imagery! :)

These days, using Debian, I install as few packages as possible when first installing the OS, deselecting all options (including "Desktop Environment"). I am then able to install only what I need, as long as I avoid meta packages.

* I have been unable to get line-wrapping to work well, despite
attempts to configure it in the "advanced" config editor.  When
composing a new message, lines are wrapped in the editor, but lines
of a paragraph are joined together when the email is sent!

Are you composing as HTML then?

No, I much prefer plain text.

Edit|Preferences has options to say you always want text. (If you can't
find it let me know.)
(BTW, in Advanced tab of preferences, general tab, config editor gives
you a Firefox-style about:config screen; useful when you just cannot
find something.)

Thank you very much for your offer to help! I am afraid that I have already tried the following preferences:

* Edit | Account Settings...
    * (my account) | Composition & Addressing
        * Compose messages in HTML format: No

* Edit | Preferences
    * Advanced | General | Config Editor
        * mail.compose.wrap_to_window_width: false
        * mail.wrap_long_lines: true
        * mailnews.wraplength: 74

Despite promising key names, they options do not seem to work. Lines are wrapped as I write email, but they are wrapped when sent.

I actually have the opposite irritation: when I ctrl-S a message it
does the line-breaking. If I then go back and edit a paragraph I have to
join lines together. (Then press Alt-E, W, to reformat.)
(I'd rather it didn't break lines until I actually send.)

It is indeed the opposite; interesting... I wonder if it is due to different settings or different versions?

(I am running version 17.0.10.)

Thanks to the (stupid) way that Thunderbird manages quotes (">"
characters are not enough), one cannot simply cut-and-paste content
to/from an editor when replying to a message.

ctrl-shift-O pastes in with quotes. Is that what you mean?
(When I want ">>", ">>>" to show who said what in a conversation, I
hilight the quoted paragraph, ctrl-X, then ctrl-shift-O, and it comes
back with an extra set of ">".)

When I reply to an email in GMail, I select all of the text in the compose editor, cut it, and paste it into Vim. I can efficiently compose my reply in Vim, and then I cut the text and paste it back into the GMail interface for sending. The ">" characters indicate quotes, and all works well.

In Thunderbird, however, there is a special "quote" state, indicated by text color. One can add quoted text using Edit | Paste As Quotation (Ctrl+Shift+O). Simply entering text that starts with one or more ">" characters does not add quoted text; Thunderbird actually adds a space at the beginning of such lines when sending the message in order to prevent email clients from considering it as part of a quote!!!

This breaks the ability to use an external editor via cut/paste as described above. When I paste a fully composed message back into the Thunderbird editor, all of the quoting is broken.

Are you using thunderbird with your gmail account as IMAP? I find it
fine, except I tend to press ctrl-S regularly, and with the gmail
account it blanks out for a couple of seconds to do a network save. And
then my phone beeps to tell me I've a new mail. (But I realize that is
definitely a case of one man's bug is another man's feature.)

No, I am running my own mail server.

Cheers,

Travis


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