GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 550773
Evolution: Do not scroll to end of Draft messages when opened.
Last modified: 2017-02-09 13:36:28 UTC
When opening a draft message in Evolution 2.22.3.1, it seems to scroll to the end of the message. So for example, if you have a 5 page draft email, opening it will open an email with end of page 5 shown, like you had scrolled to the very end of the email. This is a bit annoying - could it please instead stay at the top? This is especially applicable with certain reply styles - such as with Edit -> Preferences -> Composer Preferences -> "Reply Style" set to "Inline original messages (Outlook style)". With this style, you can have lots of nested replies at the end of the message, so scrolling to the end does not make sense, because you care about finishing off your reply, not viewing the end of the message. Other information:
Does not happen here. Is it in HTML? Does it contain animated GIFs?
...and is Caret Mode (F7) enabled?
Only happens when opening a previously saved draft (so reply and send immediately is okay). Also happens on a draft message that is not a reply. Entering a "To" address and a "Subject" make it more noticeable, because the cursor then starts off at the end of the message. If it helps, I'm running Evolution 2.22.3.1 (the version that comes with Ubuntu 8.04.1, on the AMD64 platform). Happens both on messages with Format -> HTML off, and with Format -> HTML on. I don't know if the HTML message had animated GIFs or not, but I can't see anything moving, so it probably does not. Toggling View -> Caret Mode to on or off does not seem to have any effect. So the full series of steps is: * File -> New -> Mail message. * Type some random characters (for the "To" field), press Tab key. * Type some random characters (for the "Subject" field), press Tab key. * Type a lot of random characters into the message body, including pressing the enter key lots, to create a fake body that goes for 2 or so pages. * Close the draft, and say "Save message". * Now open the draft again, and the cursor is at the end of the message. Start typing random characters, and these will be inserted at the end of the message. * Would be nice if the focus were at the top of the message, instead of at the end (or maybe an option to let people chose, for people who prefer the focus at the end).
I can reproduce this with 2.23.91. Probably a GtkHtml issue. Thanks for the detailed steps!
Actually, this seems to me as a logic step. You usually write messages from top to bottom, thus moving down will allow you to start where you stopped. I agree that it doesn't help when you return to a draft after a month, but anyway, seems correct to me. (reproducible on 2.25.90)
If it's a design decision it's either INVALID (as per specification) or WONTFIX.
This might have been fixed in the interim since it was reported. When I follow the steps in comment 3 in Evo 2.28.1, the focus is now on the top of the message body, not the end, which is good. If it no longer happens in a current version (e.g. 2.30 or 2.31 - unfortunately I don't have access to either, so am unable to test), then it can be marked as resolved. I do observe a slight bit of mangling going on with the message start when saving draft messages, but to keep things clean I've logged this separately, as bug 623727.
GtkHtml is not under active development anymore. Evolution (its main consumer) switched to a WebKit backend a while ago. It is currently unlikely that there will be any further GtkHtml development. Closing this report as WONTFIX as part of Bugzilla Housekeeping (bug 778387) to reflect reality. Please feel free to reopen this bug report in the future if anyone takes the responsibility for active development again.