Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!rutgers!att!alberta!ubc-cs!van-bc!unifax!sl
From: sl@unifax.UUCP (Stuart Lynne)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.elm
Subject: Re: Suggestions
Message-ID: <125@unifax.UUCP>
Date: 16 May 89 09:33:13 GMT
References: <121@unifax.UUCP> <5283@pbhyf.PacBell.COM>
Reply-To: sl@unifax.UUCP (Stuart Lynne)
Organization: Wimsey Associates
Lines: 62

In article <5283@pbhyf.PacBell.COM> rob@PacBell.COM (Rob Bernardo) writes:
>In article <121@unifax.UUCP> sl@unifax.UUCP (Stuart Lynne) writes:
>+A couple of suggestions for elm:
>+
>+	With builtin, when it's at the end of a message, take an extra space to
>+	get to the next message.
>+
>+I find that often I'm reading through and hit the space bar and elm zips off
>+to the next message when I really wanted to delete or reply. Having to press
>+space an extra time would que me that I'm at the end of the message and
>+should figure out what I want to do with it.
>
>While Stuart has an interesting point, I'd like to mention that the prompt
>is completely different when you've gotten to the end of the message, which
>you can use to clue yourself into the fact that you're at the end.

Yes, but my fingers are not reading the bottom line, just tapping away.
Requiring the extra space just gives them more time to stop. It just seems
that (especially on messages where the last page is close to being a full
page) I keep ending up in the next message and have to go back.

>+	Could we add another special char to allow direct saving to mailbox
>+	files in ~/Mail. 

Think, then type. Think, then type, Think, then type.

Yes I got it right in the example. I tend to save some types of things in my
News directory. For example if I got a mail message about this news article
I would prefer to store it in the News directory along with all of the other
news articles that I've received on this topic.

So change my suggestion to:

	Could we add another special char to allow direct saving to mailbox
	files in ~/News. 

>then I ask: What different directory? Is there any one directory that people
>have that bears some relationship to mail other the one's folders directory?

Specifically the ~/News directory, as normally used by rn to save news
articles to.

One other suggestion while I'm at it:

	Could we add in an option to make elm through away all characters 
	typed in advance. More like rn. 
	
	In fact adding a few more of the features rn has like gracefully 
	terminating an operation when a SIGINT is received.

Again, my fingers sometimes get in the way. In rn it doesn't seem to matter.
It doesn't take input until it's ready. So a few extra characters
accicentally typed are simply ignored. In elm you can find yourself in outer
space :-). In rn you can gracefully terminate an operation accidentally
started with ^C/DEL/BREAK. In elm you have to sit and curse while it goes
ahead. It would be nice to just have elm pay attention to a break and just
go back to the most recent prompt.



-- 
Stuart.Lynne@wimsey.bc.ca uunet!van-bc!sl 604-937-7532(voice) 604-939-4768(fax)