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Hi Jeff,
On Sat, 1 Sep 2001 10:05:52 -0700, you wrote these words of wisdom:
...
J> While I'm enjoying my evaluation of The Bat! and like it a lot, I'm
J> finding a few "issues" preventing me from enjoying it to it's
J> fullest. Rather than suffer through them I thought I could list them
J> here and get some help...
I'll take a shot at some of these observations/queries. :-)
J> 1) The message-editor doesn't work like any other I've used and it's
J> taking some time to get used to it.
When I first met it, I was bewildered as well and it did take some
getting used to, but there's good method behind its apparent madness in
my view and I personally use it for *all* messaging type editing, even
though I use Agent for news.
J> a) For example, is it possible to automatically "reflow" after fixing
J> a line. [snip]
Yes. The auto-format feature will do this. You can make it the default
setting via the editor preferences or you can enable it on a per message
basis by selecting Utilities > Autoformat (Shift-Ctrl-F) in your editor
settings.
Having this feature enabled will create a side effect. TB! will treat
all text not separated by a blank line as a single paragraph and reflow
it. It does this on the fly as you type so if you try to type a new line
before the line wrap limit by hitting the return key, the new line will
be immediately reflowed into the last. To prevent this, either skip a
line to start the new line of text or toggle off auto-format until
you've finished typing the short lines of text (a list for example).
Note also that you can reformat paragraphs manually, by hitting Alt+L as
you type.
J> b) The cursor doesn't move back to the left margin when it traverses a
J> blank line, the way it does in most Windows text editors. Therefore,
J> when I move down to the bottom to continue my message after seeing and
J> fixing a line above, I must reposition the cursor. A side-effect of
J> this appears to be that the "-- " sig delimeter is shortened to just
J> "--", as trailing blank spaces in lines appear to be truncated.
TB!'s editor uses a free caret interface. As a result of this, the
entire editor window is already active, even though you haven't entered
characters. This allows you to place the cursor anywhere you like and
just start typing.
There are advantages to this in that creating tables or doing similar
formatting is a snap, but the disadvantage is as you stated. I have
gotten quite acquainted with the Home and End keys as a result of this.
J> c) The ability to cursor down past the end of a new email is a bit
J> disconcerting, too.
Again, this is a product of the free caret interface.
J> 2) I haven't figured out how to scroll through unread messages
J> properly and efficiently. For example:
Is this the message list that you're referring to or message bodies?
J> a) When I first set up The Bat! I used 600 seconds as the time before
J> messages would appear as "read". I've since changed it to a
J> significantly lower number, but I can only make the change at the
J> highest level "account" and for posts already in my BatList folder,
J> they don't seem to change to "read" at all. Is this property applied
J> only when email is received?
That setting is the time you have to have the message body displayed
before the message is marked as read. The setting has nothing to do with
how long the message has been downloaded to your Inbox. It's a long
standing wish by many, that TB! offers the ability to mark messages as
read based on the time since they've been downloaded.
J> b) Other programs I use (Eudora and Netscape) have a button I can
J> press which will automatically find (in Eudora's case) the next
J> message, or (in Netscape's case) the next unread message. The Bat!
J> doesn't seem to have either, and I've had to scroll through all the
J> messages by hand.
These buttons are present in the view folder window only. Double click
on any message and a new window will open displaying the message body.
Now, in the same window, select view > message list. You should now be
seeing the message list for the folder. The buttons with the blue arrows
will navigate the message list for you. If you're using threaded modes,
then the navigation menu will show you how to move to the next unread
message. CTRL+] used to be the shortcut and it still works, but they've
since added Ctrl-alt-right.
J> c) I haven't found a way to open up threads automaticallly by
J> scrolling through them, and the folder list-window doesn't scroll
J> automatically, so opening up all those "+" signs can take a long time.
If you use CTRL-], it will take you to the next unread message, opening
the thread automatically as you go along.
J> Am I missing something or somethings here? Or is this something I
J> just need to get used to in order to use The Bat! ?
There's a lot to TB! that isn't immediately clear in that there are many
ways in which you can browse your message. I personally don't use the
main window a lot for instance. It's by and large minimised in my
systray. I only bring it up when I wish to browse some old messages or
do some administrative tasks.
J> I like the program, but I find that at the moment, reading list email
J> with The Bat! takes significantly longer per message than reading
J> list-mail with Netscape.
You'll find it's just as easy as you get know how to do it.
Hope this helped some and keep the queries coming. There's a lot of
hidden goodies there. I can't see myself going back to another client.
I'm just plain spoilt by TB!'s efficiency and have grown to rely on it a
lot.
- --
©Allie C Martin •• List Moderator (and fellow end-user)
PGP public key: http://pgpkey.ac-martin.com
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MUA: The Bat! 1.54 Beta/7 [OS: Windows 2000 Service Pack 2]
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