GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 352014
An icon for "reply to author" ?
Last modified: 2006-09-08 22:19:18 UTC
It is kinda mandatory. Both reply to newsgroup and reply to author have the same icon. I don't count the number of time I mixed both and send mail instead of newsgroup post. So 2 differents icons will be great. And may avoid a lot of problems !
Given that we have a pencil and envelope for posting, I'm at a bit of a loss as to what the 'send email' icon should actually look like. :)
You might want to give pan-users a spin and see if anyone there can come up with anything appropriate and incorporate it into pan/icons/pan.xcf ... I'd be happy to use it. My first thought was a pencil + newspaper for followup, and a pencil + envelope for reply, but that's really confusing when all the newsgroup articles have envelope icons in the header pane. Since the header pane would look pretty ugly with newspaper icons, and since there's nothing for newspapers to show read/unread as clearly as open/closed envelope icons, the header pane needs to keep the envelopes. So the reply-to icon will probably need some different metaphor if it's not going to be confused with followup. Maybe a mailbox? I'm not even sure you could make a mailbox recognizable in a 16x16 space.
I've got an idea. Just an idea ;) taking "next unread article" icon, and change the arrow ? Anyway, I will ask on pan-users, because I am a very very very bad artist !
OK, I recognize this could be controversial, but my thought would be to keep reply to author as a menu item, but not put it on the icon bar at all. The message being replied to is on a newsgroup, so the encouraged/default reply target should be /to/ the newsgroup. Replying to author should be possible, but not encouraged, thus, menu, but not icon bar. Problem solved! =8^) Additional thoughts/observations on usage... Here, I always reply (to group) using the keyboard accel function (f for followup) anyway, never the icon or menu entry. That's unambiguous, and since I'll be using the keyboard immediately anyway, to compose the reply, it makes sense. In fact, that's been so long habit-coded into my muscle memory from the old-pan, and I use news so much more than mail, that I very quickly reassigned the keyboard accels in kmail such that "f for followup" works there as well, when I first set it up some years ago (early 2002-ish IIRC). That shortcut had already been embedded into muscle-memory by use of pan, even then. Where I use the icon (download new headers in subscribed groups and the view only unread toggle, both of which I use frequently and have a customized accel for now, but which lacked accels previously so I got in the habit of clicking the icon), it's as much by position as by icon. The closed envelope (new post) icon isn't that much different either, but there are three in a row, and were I to use them frequently, I'd find the one I wanted by position among the three. Where I don't use icons frequently enough to know that, I hover long enough to get the popup, confirming it's what I want to do, before I click. Also, note that the compose window that pops up has both newsgroup and mail address fields. Since followup to group is my default and most used option by FAR, any time I'm doing /other/ than that, I just followup, then make the changes first thing in the compose window. (Make the changes BEFORE entering the possibly private reply, so you don't forget. =8^) Thus, as long as the address line is there and if used, hands off to the mail client, /both/ the reply to author menu entry and icon could be removed, from my perspective. While I'd agree that's going a bit far, IMO removing just the icon, leaving only the menu entry, seems perfectly reasonable, even desirable given that it encourages use of the newsgroups by default. Duncan
Duncan: sounds good to me, except it has to stay in the menu for GNKSA. :) I've removed the icon for `reply in mail' so that it can't be confused with `followup' in the menu.