[squeak-dev] [ANN] Squeak Inbox Talk - bringing squeak-dev into your image

mail at jaromir.net mail at jaromir.net
Sat Nov 6 10:44:54 UTC 2021


Hi Christoph,

On 2021-11-05T18:36:36+01:00, christoph.thiede at student.hpi.uni-potsdam.de wrote:

> It's awesome to hear that people are using SIT or might even find it useful! 

It's awesome you created this tool! :)

> >   3.  The Preview format differs based on whether a filter was used: no filter => simple last message preview; filter present => 'sophisticated' preview of the whole thread. I find this a bit confusing - why not unify the two?
> 
> What do you mean by 'sophisticated preview'? ... were you talking about a text search went you said filtering? If you enter a search term, only excerpts from the conversation will be displayed that match the search term. The idea of this was, if you search for a selector (for instance, terminate - you might also want to turn on the "match whole word" mode), you can directly read what is written about this selector in context.
> 
Yes, that's what I meant, the "google-like" preview of the context where the selector was found. I'm getting used to it so please disregard this point for the moment. BTW when I click "read on" it opens a conversation window but leaves it behing the Inbox Talk window - a bug? 

> >   4.  Accessing more details about the thread means "opening" it in another window - which is ok if you're after one particular thread but if I'm just scanning through the main list, opening (and closing) new windows is awkward; ...
> 
> ... It's rather a general UX concern whether you want large single windows or prefer many small windows instead (MDI). I think Squeak has a strong focus on MDIs, their main advantage is that you can compose them more flexibly, but I also see your point of avoiding unnecessary clicks and reusing windows. Hm ... it might be possible to integrate a full conversation browser right into the place of the preview pane, would this fit your needs? 
>
Yes, that's an interesting option! Instead of previewing the last message you'd integrate the conversation browser window. The only disadvantage cold be the frame with the actual message may be too small to study the message comfortably.

>Another option would a conversation browser window that follows the currently selected conversation in the main inbox browser (kind of Vivide style iirc). I'm thinking about this and added this to my list. :-)
> 
Yes, also nice. I grew fond of Squeak's multiframe windows (6-frame browser window etc.) and the convenience when moving the window all the relevant information moves with it - I even asked Marcel to integrate Transcript into Workspace and I love it :) So yeah, I'd prefer one multiframe window but this idea is also great! 

> >   5.  Have you considered an automatic refresh (every hour maybe?)
> 
> Yes, this would also be very helpful. :-) This raises multiple complex, though interesting concerns: ... On the VM side, every internet request blocks the image for a shorter or longer time. 
> 
True, I haven't realized that...

> 6., concerning your SMTP problems: I could reproduce your issue with outlook.com on Windows ("SSL connect failed with code: -5"). Then I retried from WSL/Ubuntu and succeeded with the same credentials there! (Important note: You need to specify your full email address as SMTP username). So probably there's something wrong with the SqueakSSL plugin on Windows? ...
> 
Interesting... thanks for this info

> Regarding the empty credentials, if you try out System-ct.1241 from the inbox and proceed from the "no * specified" debuggers, are you able to send from the MailComposition using your local server? If yes, we should update MailSender again to officially allow for "nil" as user name and passwords.
> 
I did try System-ct.1241 but with the same result - my local SMTP server doesn't like it either. The only way in my case is to modify MailComposition >> #doSendMail method and remove (comment out) the userName and password lines; then it works:

doSendMail

	(SMTPClient openOnHostNamed: self smtpServer port: self smtpServerPort)
"		user: self smtpUser;
		password: self smtpPassword;
"		login;
		mailFrom: mailMessage from to: (mailMessage to findTokens: ',') text: mailMessage asSendableText.


> >   7.  An observation: when attaching a file the Squeak mail editor won't show or notify whether the attachment has been attached. The only clue you get is when you press "remove attachment": it lists the attachments.
> 
> At the bottom of the message text, the name of the attachment is inserted into the editor. This is not very convenient but still a useful indicator. The "remove attachment" button is a very nice hack if you have deleted the attachment note from the editor. :-) Hm ... maybe we should rename it to "manage attachments" and show a dialog from which you can also view, replace, or reorder attachments?
> 
You're right, it's inserted at the bottom, I overlooked that :)

> PS: Obviously, both SIT and MailSender/SMTPClient are open-source, so your contributions will be very welcome, as always. :D
>
I wish I found some time :D

Christoph, here are some more comments if you don't mind:

8. Pipermail archive does something weird with the attachments - it says "A non-text attachment was scrubbed..." and then renames the attachment to attachment.obj losing its original name and suffix making it unnecessarily hard to access it from Inbox Talk too. It's not critical, just inconvenient...

9. When composing a message does CMD-s do something like saving the draft somewhere? Like if you do CMD-s in the Workspace it saves its contents to the folder where the image is. It may become critical if you compose a large mail and lose it :)

10. Flagging: you already told me flagging is not implemented yet; I'm trying to find a way to use Inbox Talk to keep track of conversations I'm contributing to or willing to contribute. The green and orange arrows on the right are awesome. At the moment, however, I'm using my email client to check for new messages and Inbox Talk to process them. I'd love to get rid of the email client part :) Any plans to somehow highlight conversations with new messages since last Refresh?

11. Filters: a wonderful tool! I'm trying to figure the logic though: E.g. there are 3 conversations I was mentioned in and 13 conversations I have engaged in. When I activate both filters at the same time I expected to 13 to 16 conversations satisfyng one of the two criteria - BUT I get 30 conversations which confuses me a great deal :) Similarly I have 43 concersations filtered as "by myself" but when I add the filter "I was mentioned" it returns 59 conversations! So the filters are not in OR or AND relationship - what is it then?

Similarly checking both "I received replies" and "by myself" works in an AND manner but "I received replies" and "I was mentioned" works in an OR manner. What am I missing?

Again, thanks for this great tool, I hope this super long message won't take too much of your time.
Best,
jaromir

> Best,
> Christoph
> 
> [1] https://sourcegraph.com/search?q=context:global+repo:%5Egithub%5C.com/OpenSmalltalk/opensmalltalk-vm%24%400d706fc+file:%5Eplatforms/win32/plugins/SqueakSSL/sqWin32SSL%5C.c+SQSSL_GENERIC_ERROR&patternType=literal
> 
> 
> ---
> Sent from Squeak Inbox Talk
> 
> On 2021-11-01T17:52:33+00:00, mail at jaromir.net wrote:
> 
> > Hi Christoph,
> > 
> > I'm learning to use the Inbox Talk as a replacement for forum.world.st which I was using as my primary workflow tool (rather than a mail client). I'm very impressed by your Inbox Talk and would like to share my feedback:
> > 
> > 1. Inbox Talk conversation "[ANN] Squeak Inbox Talk - bringing squeak-dev into your image" appears split into two threads in the Inbox Talk (see the screenshot); I can't figure out why because the pipermail archive sees it correctly as one single conversation. Possibly a bug?
> > 2. I miss an information about the sender of the last message in the thread (like in forum.world.st) - either on the line along with the timestamp and the subject or in the preview pane (or see suggestion #4 below). Sometimes it is not clear from the preview who the sender is (her signature being buried somewhere or missing altogether).
> > 3. The Preview format differs based on whether a filter was used: no filter => simple last message preview; filter present => 'sophisticated' preview of the whole thread. I find this a bit confusing - why not unify the two?
> > 4. Accessing more details about the thread means "opening" it in another window - which is ok if you're after one particular thread but if I'm just scanning through the main list, opening (and closing) new windows is awkward; how about having a large window showing the list of threads, the 'sophisticated' preview of the currently selected thread, a list of messages in the that thread and a preview of one message (the first or last by default) - as if the conversation browser was always open and glued together with the main Inbox Talk browser - see my screenshot :) Selecting another thread would automatically display the list of messages in that thread and previewed its first (or last) message allowing to quickly scan through the mailing list... I guess no new functionality needs to be added - just glue the two existing windows' contents? Could it mean a performance issue??
> > 5. Have you considered an automatic refresh (every hour maybe?)
> > 6. Tried to send this via the Inbox Talk but failed with the message: "SSL connect failed with code: -5". I'm on Win10, smtp-mail.outlook.com, port 587 - in case it matters :) I'd probably need some help here - it didn't even ask me for my password, just failed... Tried a different smtp server, port 465 - failed too. Trying port 25 now... Nope: it asked for my username/password but eventually failed with: "telnet protocol error:" :( So I'm sending this via my Windows mail client. Is it possible to setup and test the Squeak mail editor separately?
> > 7. An observation: when attaching a file the Squeak mail editor won't show or notify whether the attachment has been attached. The only clue you get is when you press "remove attachment": it lists the attachments.
> > 
> > I'd like to use the Inbox Talk as my main tool so I may be back with more feedback :)
> > 
> > Thanks a lot!!
> > 
> > Jaromir
> > 
> > 
> > -------------- next part --------------
> > An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
> > URL: <http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev/attachments/20211101/68459f92/attachment-0001.html>
> > -------------- next part --------------
> > A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
> > Name: Inbox Talk 2021-11-01 161820.png
> > Type: image/png
> > Size: 1011016 bytes
> > Desc: Inbox Talk 2021-11-01 161820.png
> > URL: <http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev/attachments/20211101/68459f92/attachment-0001.png>
> > 
> > 
> -------------- next part --------------
> An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
> URL: <http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev/attachments/20211105/253d7f78/attachment.html>
> 
> 


More information about the Squeak-dev mailing list