Re: [Pan-users] Feature request: multiple selections in task list

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Tue, Apr 30, 2013 at 05:07:45AM +0000, Duncan wrote:
> Jay posted on Tue, 30 Apr 2013 09:25:24 +0800 as excerpted:
> 
> > I know this won't make it into version 1.0 at this late date, maybe not
> > even in 1.1,
> 
> FWIW, 1.0 has been at the top of the changelog for years, thru various 
> lead developers and in fact a full rewrite from C into C++, so when/if 
> 1.0 happens is more or less arbitrary, but from my perspective (as a user 
> and list participant since the gnome-1-pan era, since 2002 so over a 
> decade now), pan is now 1.0-feature-complete, having gotten in the last 
> year or two both a replacement for the old-pan rules in the form of the 
> auto-* actions (preferences, actions tab), and the last couple long-
> missing features to fill things out, binary posting and secure-connection 
> ssl/tls support (along with several other less major features).  So from 
> my perspective, it's ready for a 1.0 as soon as the current devs deem it 
> stable enough. =:^)

Alas, I don't believe Pan is sufficiently mature for a 1.0 release in 
2013. Or even 2000 for that matter.

- No Auto-save: messages being worked on are not automatically saved, so 
if something kills Pan while you are editing a message, that message is 
gone forever;

- No Sent Items: messages that you send are not kept anywhere, unless 
you manually save them as a draft before sending, so if you post a 
message and it gets eaten by the receiving news server, it is gone 
forever;

- Lousy default file names: saving drafts apparently defaults to 
whatever file name you last used, regardless of the subject line of the 
message you are working on;

- Ignoring 30 year old UI guidelines, leading to data-loss: when saving 
drafts, Pan does not warn you when you are about to override an existing 
file, so it is trivially easy to override existing drafts;

- Poor handling of HTML attachments: HTML attachments are displayed 
inline as raw text, instead of handled gracefully (e.g. shown as an 
attachment).

These issues are the difference between a polished and professional 
product, and something with sharp corners and splinters that will catch 
you if you're not constantly on your guard.


Oh, and I must admit that these issues may be fixed in the latest 
version of Pan. I may be a tad behind the times. But the default version 
of Pan provided by current Debian (if not others) still shows all these 
issues. Although I suppose that moving to a 1.0 release might encourage 
the Linux distros to use that 1.0 release instead of older versions...



-- 
Steven