When reading mail in the default claws configuration if the keyboard focus is in the message list then the up/down/pgup/pgdn arrow keys allow you to move through the list. Then you press ENTER to view the message that the cursor is on. You can press SHIFT-TAB twice to take keyboard focus to the message that is being read and then use up/down/pgup/pgdn to scroll within the message. I want to have it display the way Kmail does. In kmail you use the left/right arrow keys to scroll in the list of messages and the message is displayed immediately that it is selected (no selecting a message and pressing ENTER to see it). The use of left/right arrows means that up/down/pgup/pgdn can be used for reading the message. This means that the routing aspects of reading mail in kmail can be conveniently done without using the mouse (SHIFT-TAB is not convenient) and with maximum speed. One key press to do every common operation should be the aim. In Kmail I press the right arrow key to display a message. In Claws I press the down arrow key to go to the list entry and then ENTER to view the message, but that's only if I have the keyboard focus in the message list. So in Kmail if I want to skim many messages that are more than one screen long (EG the BTRFS mailing list which tends towards long messages of minor interest to me) then I do the following to read a message: 1) RIGHT 2) PGDN, PDGN 3) DEL In Claws with the default config it would be: 1) Click mouse on message in listbox 2) Click mouse in body of message and scroll down - or hover over and use scroll-wheel when using a desktop system (scrolling isn't an option for my Thinkpad 3) DEL Kmail is much better for this. When you have 3000 unread mailing list messages the ability to skim and delete a typical message in less than a second with Kmail really matters. Before anyone asks, no I don't want to go to a text-mode MUA. I want a GUI MUA that has keyboard shortcuts that allow fast and efficient operation. For scanning mailing list mail the K9 MUA on an Android phone is possibly going to give me a better average speed than Claws on a 27" monitor. This is a sign of a serious design problem with Claws. Now IMAP allows an unlimited number of email clients to share a mailbox. Modern storage is large enough that having multiple copies of the email on one system isn't a problem. So I guess I could use one IMAP client to triage mail and then another to compose mail, manage the offline archive of old mail (that's not in IMAP) and do the other advanced tasks. But it would be nice if one MUA could do it all. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/
Hi Russell, Have you read the Claws manual? Just asking because: 2.3. Reading your mail Once you have retrieved your emails, the Inbox folder will contain them. The total number of emails in a folder is shown at the right of the folder's name, along with the number of unread and new emails in it. To see them, click on the folder row in the folder list, and the list of emails in that folder will be displayed in the Message List pane. You can then select an email using the mouse, or by using the Up and Down keys to navigate through the list, and the Space bar to display and scroll emails. You can use other keys to navigate through emails, like P and N (previous and next). Shift-P and Shift-N work for unread messages, btw. And in both cases, the selection of a folder in the folder tree doesn't override these keystrokes. AND you can read through the currently selected mail using Space. (If you hate that, see below.) If you want to change the keystrokes you use to do a certain thing, and it's on the GUI menu somewhere, make sure you've enabled customisable keyboard shortcuts in Configuration/Preferences/Miscellaneous. Once you've done that, if you drop the menu down with the mouse, and run the mouse cursor down the menu until you've highlighted the relevant command (don't click!), you can press the new key combination. It will show up on the menu, and work immediately. (Important to know this, so you know WHY all of a sudden pressing A has some other effect than to insert a letter a into your email.) And don't forget the invisible commands; they're all laid out in the manual. Anyway, good luck with it! Cheers, -- Trish Fraser, VVMZ4 91L2V -35.67910, 142.66607 Mon Jul 15 11:40:22 EST 2013 GNU/Linux 1997-2012 #283226 counter.li.org andromeda up 4 hour(s), 8 min. Mageia release 3 (Official) for x86_64 kernel 3.8.13.4-desktop-1.mga3
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Russell Coker -
Trish Fraser