[Users] Claws config needs much better documentation

[Steve Litt]

On Sun, 29 Jul 2012 02:08:51 +0200
Michael Gmelin <freebsd at grem.de> wrote:

> On Sat, 28 Jul 2012 19:44:19 -0400
> Steve Litt <slitt at troubleshooters.com> wrote:
> 
> > Hi all,
> > 
> > I'm finding it insanely difficult to configure things in Claws.
> > 
[clip]
> > 
> > This might sound like minor stuff, but when you're dealing with 500
> > or so emails a day, optimal configuration could easily save 1/2
> > hour per day.
> > 
> > I went all through the user manual, and little if anything was said
> > about any of this. Does anyone know of good, complete and accurate
> > Claws documentation that tells how to configure things?
> > 
> > Thanks
> > 
> > SteveT
> > 
> > Steve Litt                *  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
> >                           *  http://twitter.com/stevelitt
> > Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance
> > 
> > _______________________________________________
> > Users mailing list
> > Users at lists.claws-mail.org
> > http://lists.claws-mail.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/users
> 
> Hi Steve,
> 
> Have considered copying the ~/.claws-mail directory of your desktop
> machine to your laptop? 

Thanks Michael. That's an outstanding troubleshooting diagnostic test.
It would have revealed quite a bit. In fact, I teach techniques just
like that in my troubleshooting course.

In this particular case, I felt the likelihood of losing the symptom
forever, or creating some other problem, was too high, so I decided to
do other things first. Expecially since you already gave me the
solution to one of the problems. Thanks!

[clip]
> 
> The behavior of CTRL-D on your desktop vs. your laptop sounds
> like it has been mapped to delete for the whole machine - delete does
> in claws-mail what you're describing - if you try using CTRL-D in a
> text editor (preferably GTK based like gedit, since this should use
> the same toolkit options) you will probably see that your desktop
> deletes a character while your laptop doesn't. If this is the case,
> it's easiest to fix this for your installation.

It turned out to be more complicated and quirky than this. At the
bottom of this email is the workaround I used to assign "d" to "move to
trash". Basically, one component of the problem was that if the "move
to trash" command on the menu was highlighted and I pressed "d", it
would run "Delete", whose letter *on the menu* was d.

> 
> Having to hit Enter to read a message is actually not a bug but a
> feature (which I personally love), but you can easily customize this
> to whatever you prefer under "Preferences -> Display -> Summaries ->
> Open message when selected". If you just clone your ~/.claws-mail
> folder like I suggested above this will be configured as well.

This was exactly what I was hoping to find. I made your suggested
adjustment, and it gave me the behavior I wanted. Thanks.

All of this supports my initial assertion, that Claws needs MUCH better
documentation. It's a good program that can do a lot of things, but its
configuration is complex and sometimes quirky, and no documentation
I've found comes remotely close to documenting such configuration
issues.

I think Claws should have a "HOWTO" Wiki, so that methods could be
placed in real time. I found out in this thread there's an HTML howto
that contains the answer to my question about message body agreeing
with the selected message header, but that HOWTO is a non-obvious two
clicks from the main page, and it can't be added to in realtime.

To be added to whatever HOWTO we have, here's the "solution" to "can't
change keystroke on "Move to Trash":

1) With the mouse, highlight the menu's "Move to Trash"
2) Press the z key. z is now the hotkey.
3) Exit Claws-Mail
4) Editing ~/.claws-mail/menurc, change the z to d
5) Restart Claws, your hotkey is now d

One might think it could be done more directly, but that's not my
experience.

Here's another one. Adding something to the toolbar isn't as direct as
one might anticipate.
When in Configuration->Preferences->Toolbars->Mainwindow, clicking the
Add button produces the following error: "Selected Action already set.
Please choose Another Action from list." A bizarre way for an add
button to work. So here's the secret, using "Reply to List" as an
example...

1) Configuration->Preferences->Toolbars->Mainwindow
2) Highlight a separator from the list
3) Click the Add button. It appears to do nothing.
4) Scroll to the bottom of the list, and there's now a new separator
   item.
5) Highlight the new separator item.
6) Change the item type from separator to Internal Function
7) Change Event executed on click to Reply to mailing list
8) Click the Replace button
9) Click the Up button until the new toolbar item is where you want
10) Click the Apply button
11) Click the OK button

Thanks

SteveT