[MlMt] 5969?

[Pierre Igot]

I am actually in southwest Nova Scotia, so a bit farther away, although at the scale of North America as a whole, we are indeed “neighbours”. We haven’t had any flooding here, but I am sorry to hear about the devastation in your area. With global warming accelerating, I am afraid we are in for very turbulent times indeed.

My poor Betalogue site has been neglected for years. With the slo-mo collapse of Twitter, I’ve moved my tech observations to Mastodon (@betalogue at toot.community), but I still hope to go back to real blogging some day, which will first involve revamping my old (very dated) web site. Life, work and all that have meant that I haven’t had much time for this in recent years.

GUI scripting is indeed a rather frustrating process, but I find that Keyboard Maestro is an excellent alternative in many situations. I have tons of macros designed to “fix” the UI flaws and deficiencies of many apps. Even MailMate, which is mostly an excellent and well-behaved Mac app, can use some KM-assisted lubrification at times.

Glad I could help.

Pierre



On 15 Jul 2023, at 17:07, Erik Mueller-Harder wrote:

> Hello, Pierre --
>
> I appreciate your Betalogue: I've read it vis RSS for years!  And we're neighbors: I'm about 50km south of Quebec in Vermont.  I hope you survived the recent flooding unscathed.
>
> [Though our house and property were largely spared, our town and the surrounding towns and small cities were devastated.  Though the state has qualified for federal disaster relief and though FEMA funds will begin trickling in before too long, neither of these helps the small businesses, which were just beginning to recover from COVID lockdowns and from flooding about ten years ago; they're the lifeblood of these small towns, and they're in a Very Bad Way. 😢]
>
> Thank you *so much* for your KM macro.  I use Keyboard Maestro all the time, but I've avoided GUI scripting for so long that I'd almost forgotten you could do this sort of thing!  I will very happily tailor your script for my MM forgetful-column needs.  Hooray!
>
> -- Erik
>
> ------
> **2023-07-15 14:26 | [Pierre Igot](mailto:mailmate at latext.com)**:
>> Hi,
>>
>> For what it’s worth, I too find it annoying that MailMate cannot properly remember my columns — in my case, my column widths for the combined Inbox in widescreen layout — and I do hope that Benny eventually finds a way to fix this, but in the meantime, I have a Keyboard Maestro macro command that readjusts my column widths after relaunch (i.e. when they are forgotten most of the time, although strangely, not 100% of the time).
>>
>> The macro works for MY preferred column layout in the message list, within the widescreen layout for the mail viewer window. It makes the Source Account column narrower and the Subject column wider (which pushes all remaining columns farther to the right). That’s basically all that’s needed in my case. Obviously, depending on which columns you have and what you prefer, your steps and values will vary.
>>
>> The macro also assumes that my width for the message pane on the right remains the same, which in my experience it does when quitting and relaunching MM. (The X values need to be adjusted if the width of the message pane on the right changes.) As a first step, the macro makes sure that the whole window has my preferred size (2885 x 1560), but I find that this too tends not to be forgotten by MM, so that step is not really necessary.
>>
>> I’m sharing this just in case it’s useful (with adaptations) for anyone else… It’s better than nothing, like I said, in the meantime.
>>
>> Keyboard Maestro is a great tool to “fix” software when the software maker is unwilling or unable to do so, for whatever reason. KM obviously cannot help for everything, but in this case it doesn’t do a bad job of automating something that is tedious and challenging to have to do right manually every time.
>>
>> Pierre
>>
>> MACRO:
>> https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/yt1ypwwtlewuulbsqzix2/macro.jpg?rlkey=jfd3zrljdag0xzn1eq6253eho&dl=0
>>
>> Adjust Inbox Columns
>>
>> Triggered by any of the following:
>>
>> The Status Menu is selected
>>
>> Will execute the following actions:
>>
>> If All Conditions Met
>> Front window title contains “Inbox”
>>
>> Execute the Following Actions:
>>
>> Resize Front Window to Pixels
>> In MailMate
>> To: 2885 horizontally, 1560 vertically.
>>
>> Move and Click and Drag
>> At (1684,500) from the top left corner of the front window.
>> And drag absolute (WINDOW(0,Right)-1305,815).
>>
>> Move and Click and Drag
>> At (1362,85) from the top left corner of the front window.
>> And drag relative (-150,0).
>>
>> Move and Click and Drag
>> At (913,85) from the top left corner of the front window.
>> And drag relative (300,0).
>>
>>
>> Otherwise, Execute the Following Actions:
>>
>> Display Text Briefly
>> Bring main window to front
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On 15 Jul 2023, at 4:24, Alexandre Takacs wrote:
>>
>>> One can wish… One of my major per peeve for the past 3 years or so :/
>>>
>>>> Somehow, I’d hoped that the massive rewrite would’ve solved the Forgetful Columns problem, but I guess not.
>>


--
LATEXT: Literature, music and visuals / Littérature, musique et graphisme - www.latext.com
BETALOGUE: Blog - www.betalogue.com | Twitter: @betalogue | Mastodon: @betalogue at toot.community
FAUX AMIS : Site sur les faux amis anglais-français - www.fauxamis.fr | Twitter: @Pierre_Igot