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Bug 714391 - Geary needs an optional horizontal reader layout
Geary needs an optional horizontal reader layout
Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 714183
Product: geary
Classification: Other
Component: client
unspecified
Other All
: Normal normal
: ---
Assigned To: Geary Maintainers
Geary Maintainers
Depends on: 714183 730712
Blocks:
 
 
Reported: 2012-08-07 09:00 UTC by Geary Maintainers
Modified: 2018-01-09 23:06 UTC
See Also:
GNOME target: ---
GNOME version: ---


Attachments
Simple patch to turn Geary into a traditional three-pane layout (716 bytes, patch)
2014-09-25 19:19 UTC, Jim Nelson
none Details | Review

Description Charles Lindsay 2013-11-21 20:26:02 UTC


---- Reported by geary-maint@gnome.bugs 2012-08-07 02:00:00 -0700 ----

Original Redmine bug id: 5629
Original URL: http://redmine.yorba.org/issues/5629
Searchable id: yorba-bug-5629
Original author: Lee Hyde
Original description:

I find the existing three-column layout of Geary (and Postler before it)
rather difficult to get to grips with. Whilst a three-column layout might make
sense for the 16:9 display format, it makes less sense for the 4:3 display
format (of which there are still a significant number in use. Especially in
the work and internet cafe environments).

Furthermore, as humans read by scanning horizontally, restricting the reader
pane to a comparatively narrow column makes little sense. It forces the reader
to shift their gaze (from the end of one line, to the beginning of another)
far too often, which I think is the root of my dislike for the current three-
column layout.

Geary needs an (optional?) horizontal reader layout, akin to Thunderbird's
classic layout and the default layouts of Liferea, Feedler and LightReader (to
name but a few examples). There is a reason why this particular layout is so
prevalent amongst reader applications; it's space efficient, and easy on the
eyes.

Related issues:
related to geary - Feature #3818: possibly offer Gmail-style layout (Open)



--- Bug imported by chaz@yorba.org 2013-11-21 20:26 UTC  ---

This bug was previously known as _bug_ 5629 at http://redmine.yorba.org/show_bug.cgi?id=5629

Unknown version " in product geary. 
   Setting version to "!unspecified".
Unknown milestone "unknown in product geary. 
   Setting to default milestone for this product, "---".
Setting qa contact to the default for this product.
   This bug either had no qa contact or an invalid one.
Resolution set on an open status.
   Dropping resolution 

Comment 1 marc 2014-09-25 11:43:11 UTC
I came across this message: https://mail.gnome.org/archives/geary-list/2012-October/000060.html

In this message, it is mentioned:
"To achieve this I simply had to change one attribute and it seems to work pretty good"

Would someone know what was the one attribute to change?

Thanks.
Comment 2 Jim Nelson 2014-09-25 19:18:31 UTC
I suspect he simply converted a Gtk.Box(Gtk.Orientation.HORIZONTAL) to a Gtk.Box(Gtk.Orientation.VERTICAL).  Attached is a diff that does just that.  I'm unconvinced that this simple change is enough to warrant adding an option to change the layout -- there's a lot of wasted space here.
Comment 3 Jim Nelson 2014-09-25 19:19:07 UTC
Created attachment 287104 [details] [review]
Simple patch to turn Geary into a traditional three-pane layout
Comment 4 Robert Schroll 2014-09-25 21:50:04 UTC
You may be interested in bug #714793, in which we discuss another change to the layout.
Comment 5 marc 2014-09-26 08:27:57 UTC
I am not sure what is the wasted space you mention but I am happy with that personally. Thank you for the tip. Maybe if I find the time, I'll add an option in the preferences but it seems unecessary as by the look of it it will be taken care of by bug #714793
Comment 6 Jim Nelson 2014-09-26 18:34:29 UTC
Bug #714793 won't implement a horizontal layout, however, that's just to switch between 2-column and 3-column mode.  But I am hoping that that will be enough for most everyone.
Comment 7 Lee Hyde 2014-09-27 14:04:12 UTC
"…that's just to switch
between 2-column and 3-column mode"

To hide the folder list? Depending on the means of toggling, I wouldn't mind seeing that in a hypothetical 'classic' layout. Heck I wouldn't mind seeing the ability to hide the reader pane also. Maybe even link the two (e.g. hiding folder list triggers reader pane; hide reader pane triggers folder list – in essence 'read' versus 'browse' mode).

"But I am hoping that that will be enough
for most everyone."

It certain won't for me. I really can't imagine why developers can't see the utter unsuitability of these vertical 'columnar' layouts for reader applications such as Geary. 

It seems quite clear and 'common sense' to me that whilst a vertical pane is optimum for a folder list or directory tree, it's decidedly sub-optimal for a conversation list (even in two-column mode, e-mail titles are liable to be cut off. Especially on 4:3 displays) and reader panes (we read and write horizontally, ergo it makes sense to use a horizontal arrangement to limit line breaks). The 'wasted space' argument appears to me rather fundamentalist, belies the the real world use cases of such reader applications (there's a reason why the 'classic' layout is near universal in reader applications) and to be frank I just can't see any wasted space.

This really does affect 4:3 displays (still common in office workspaces, library workstations, etc). I suspect that most of the developers work from widescreen displays (because who would choose a 4:3 display if given a choice) and they might want to dog-food Geary and it's various layouts on a 6 year old 4:3 display. :-)

Regards,

Lee.

P.S. Please understand, I'm not intending to come off as snarky, just passionate about layouts. ;-)
Comment 8 Robert Schroll 2014-09-27 18:24:06 UTC
Thanks for the detailed message.  It's great to see people passionate about Geary, even if we don't completely agree!  The fact that this bug has been left open means that we'll consider changes.  But let me point out two reasons why we're not jumping on it right now.

1) Options are bad.

They're bad for developers.  Not only do they take more work to implement, they give the project technical debt.  Each option presents another code path that needs to be tested and kept up to date.  Any option that the developers don't regularly use is subject to bit rot and breakage.  This is especially true in young projects like Geary, where fairly fundamental changes may still be made.

Moreover, options limit future features, which have to be made to work with all combinations of options.  For instance, we just implemented the inline composer.  When you start a new message, it takes over the conversation view.  Since we can count on the conversation view being visible, this wasn't too hard to implement.  But if there had been an option to hide it, as you suggest, we'd have to test for that state and react accordingly.  (And decide what that reaction should be.)  Note that the number of states grows geometrically with the number of options, so this quickly becomes a chore.

Somewhat paradoxically, options are also bad for users.  People are actually happier when they're given fewer choices.  This is sometimes referred to as the "paradox of choice."

2) Geary behaves differently from a traditional mail reader, so it doesn't use a traditional layout.

First, let me address this:
> we read and write horizontally, ergo it makes sense to use a horizontal
> arrangement to limit line breaks
There's disagreement about the exact number, but usability studies generally agree the optimal line length for reading is 50-75 characters or so.  (One rule of thumb is "2 alphabets".)  Shorter than that, your eyes have to do too much zigzagging.  Longer, it's harder to track back along the line to find the next one.  On my 15" monitor, 75 characters take up only a third of the width.  So in most cases, we're not running out of space to show the messages at the optimal width.

Traditional mail clients show a single message at a time.  Emails tend to be short, so they don't need a all the vertical space possible.  However, you do need a list of all messages, which will tend to be quite long.  To see a lot of them at once, but still give enough information about each, they're put on a single wide line each.  Stick the list of messages on top of the message viewer, and you have the traditional layout.

With conversation-oriented clients like Geary, we display many messages at once.  Keeping in mind that the optimal width is <75 characters, this means we need more vertical space to display them.  However, the list of conversations won't have as many entries, so we don't have to show as many at a time.  Therefore, we make them chunkier and stick them next to the conversation view, instead of on top of it.

I'm aware that I'm probably not going to convince you with this reasoning, but hopefully you can understand why we did what we did, even if you don't agree.  This may help you come up with the argument to convince us that we're wrong. :)
Comment 9 Jim Nelson 2014-09-30 20:40:01 UTC
To add a few more comments to Robert's (which are very much in line with my thinking):

* I use a rather old Dell notebook computer with a 4:3 display.  No, I don't use it everyday, but considering I do develop on it and that I'm the primary developer of Geary, I have something at stake here.

* I also use at home a monitor swivelled into portrait layout.  This is a motivation for me to offer a way to toggle the folder list off.

I still don't like the 2- or 3-way horizontal layout.  I just don't think it is a good fit for Geary's flow.  A wide message list works for a tree layout of a "traditional" threaded email client, but not so much when the threads are grouped into a single list entry.  A short mail viewer works okay with one message, but begins to be an issue when (as in Geary) you're displaying a number of messages at once.

If we were to offer an alternate layout for Geary, I'm more inclined to do something like Gmail (bug #714183), i.e. a full-window conversation list (each conversation a single line) that, when clicked, shifts to a full-window conversation view.  Toggling the folder list on/off becomes less of an issue with that layout.
Comment 10 Michael Gratton 2018-01-09 23:06:30 UTC
I tend to agree with Jim that for a conversation-oriented app, merging the conversation list and viewer a-la GMail is the way to go, so am marking this as a duplicate of that.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 714183 ***