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Bug 221270 - Send & Receive -dialog should show also account name for usability reasons
Send & Receive -dialog should show also account name for usability reasons
Status: RESOLVED FIXED
Product: evolution
Classification: Applications
Component: Mailer
2.6.x (obsolete)
Other All
: Normal minor
: ---
Assigned To: Rohini
Evolution QA team
: 236922 241957 322312 (view as bug list)
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
 
Reported: 2002-03-02 15:35 UTC by Toni Willberg
Modified: 2013-09-13 00:50 UTC
See Also:
GNOME target: ---
GNOME version: ---


Attachments
Screenshot of Send Receive dialog (18.80 KB, image/png)
2006-01-12 11:09 UTC, Rohini
  Details
Patch with suggested changes (2.17 KB, patch)
2006-01-18 06:23 UTC, Rohini
committed Details | Review
Screenshot (17.81 KB, image/png)
2006-01-18 06:25 UTC, Rohini
  Details

Description Toni Willberg 2002-03-02 15:35:19 UTC
I have configured two accounts which both remain on same IMAP server.


Send & Receive mail dialog currectly shows name of server while receiving
new  mail. It currectly prints as:

 Server: imap.example.com, Type: IMAP
 Server: imap.example.com, Type: IMAP


I'd like the dialog to show also name of account. This would be usefull if
receiving mail fails or jams for some reason. It would be nice if it prints
following or similar:

 Server: imap.example.com, Account: john.doe@example.com, Type: IMAP
 Server: imap.example.com, Account: mary.tester@example.com, Type: IMAP
Comment 1 Jeffrey Stedfast 2002-03-18 20:22:50 UTC
yea, this is covered by another bug report though so I'm going to
close this one.
Comment 2 Toni Willberg 2002-03-22 11:07:44 UTC
Ok.

Could you put a link to that other bug report here also, thanks.
Comment 3 Toni Willberg 2003-06-04 06:05:49 UTC
Atleast these bugs address the same issue:
 http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=236922
 http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=241957

But I can't find the bug all these bugs are supposed to be duplicates of.

Could you try to find it, or reopen the first one you find and make
others duplicate of that one?

I reopen this until something better comes up. This was marked as
"notabug", which was incorrect anyway. ;)

Thanks!
Comment 4 André Klapper 2004-05-10 17:22:02 UTC
*** bug 241957 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 5 André Klapper 2004-05-10 17:22:19 UTC
*** bug 236922 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 6 Toni Willberg 2004-12-03 09:27:46 UTC
updated version, problem is still valid
Comment 7 John Keller 2004-12-03 09:48:21 UTC
Definitely still valid; I'd all but given up that anyone else would
see it...

My suggestion: use the account name. Considering that this is required
information (at time account is set up), it is far too underused in
the interface outside of the configuration dialog.

I would be willing to be that the account name, as it's user-assigned,
will be more meaningful than the server name + type (pop/imap). And it
has the benefit of being shorter than the email address (especially
with "given.last@longaddress.dom" regularly being used).
Comment 8 Calum Benson 2005-07-28 10:40:25 UTC
Apologies for any spam... cc'ing usability-maint on all Evolution usability
bugs. Filter on EVO-USABILITY-SPAM to ignore.
Comment 9 Daniel Holbach 2005-11-24 11:39:26 UTC
Was also reported as http://bugzilla.ubuntu.com/show_bug.cgi?id=18722
Comment 10 André Klapper 2005-11-25 13:24:39 UTC
upgrading version number
Comment 11 André Klapper 2005-11-25 13:24:54 UTC
*** Bug 322312 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 12 Rohini 2006-01-12 11:09:02 UTC
Created attachment 57215 [details]
Screenshot of Send Receive dialog

The send receive dialog can display info as account-name(protocol) : server
Comment 13 Srinivasa Ragavan 2006-01-16 07:33:54 UTC
Committing Rohini's patch to head.
Comment 14 André Klapper 2006-01-17 15:06:42 UTC
again: please, please, please do NOT put whitespaces in front of colons!
this is very bad style and i just fixed a few of them a few weeks ago. sigh...
Comment 15 André Klapper 2006-01-17 17:04:26 UTC
no way dudes, reopening.

- you put whitespace in front of a colon
- if you are a translator and get a ""Server: %s, Type: %s"", you
  know what to do. if you now get a ""<b>%s (%s)</b> : %s"", 
  nobody ever knows how to translator that three %s or what is 
  what at all!!! do NOT forget the translators! use comments:
  http://developer.gnome.org/doc/tutorials/gnome-i18n/developer.html#use-comments
- you changed strings but did not inform gnome-i18n and 
  gnome-doc-list (at least not yet).

http://cvs.gnome.org/viewcvs/evolution/mail/mail-send-recv.c?r1=1.105&r2=1.106
Comment 16 John Keller 2006-01-17 17:35:45 UTC
In light of Andre's comments (comment 15), why does the description need to be so long? This is a transitory dialog box (and sort of annoying at that). Use simple names and place the status bar next to them.

I'd like to re-nominate my suggestions (comment 7): use only the account name.

The server is included in the account info (user-assigned, and known; or admin-assigned, and irrelevant). The transport type is also less than useful in a transient state. Why do I need to know that account "foo" uses POP each time I connect to fetch my email? And, like the server, this is either known or admin-assigned.

If only an account name is used, users will have a meaningful reference (self-admin'ed or a reference for the IT department). It also resolves translation problems, since it's a single string with no ordering issues.
Comment 17 André Klapper 2006-01-17 17:47:53 UTC
i second the last comment. at least drop the server address, it's useless.
Comment 18 Srinivasa Ragavan 2006-01-18 04:28:06 UTC
john, as i see most users, hardly use Account names, and what gets filled is the email address. Take for example ive personally use both imap as well as groupwise for my emails and it is pretty common here. So I will have two a/c with almost (0) appended to the first one. In most such scenarios type and server really helps you. And for local a/c and sendmail you dont have account names at all, Which really causes a lot of confusion.

Assigning to rohini to fix this up asap.
Comment 19 Rohini 2006-01-18 05:46:01 UTC
Will make suggested changes. 

(1) Removing whitespace before :
(2) Make it translator friendly as specified in http://developer.gnome.org/doc/tutorials/gnome-i18n/developer.html#avoid-markup

Comment 20 Rohini 2006-01-18 06:23:07 UTC
Created attachment 57574 [details] [review]
Patch with suggested changes
Comment 21 Rohini 2006-01-18 06:25:05 UTC
Created attachment 57575 [details]
Screenshot
Comment 22 John Keller 2006-01-18 10:07:03 UTC
(In reply to comment #18)
> john, as i see most users, hardly use Account names, and what gets filled is
> the email address. Take for example ive personally use both imap as well as
> groupwise for my emails and it is pretty common here. So I will have two a/c
> with almost (0) appended to the first one. In most such scenarios type and
> server really helps you. And for local a/c and sendmail you dont have account
> names at all, Which really causes a lot of confusion.

Mmm, good point. I hadn't thought about cases where users just accepted the default account name (= email address). And I agree that in the case of two accesses (POP + IMAP) for same account, the access type is useful.

But I'm still not sure about the utility of the server address. This is a nice technical point, but I don't understand why the user needs to see it for every access. Especially since it makes for a very wide dialog box (even more so when the user simply uses the default email address-as-account name).

Something I didn't mention before: Why is "Sending mail" no logner displayed, in favor of "sendmail: /"? Is Evolution targeting mail admins or end users? How many typical users are going to understand that sendmail is the local copy of an email daemon? Why is "/" important to those users? Questions that maybe have been considered, but I wanted to bring them up. I really think that "Sending mail" is much clearer than the new "daemon + ???" label.
Comment 23 André Klapper 2006-01-18 10:17:09 UTC
as always, i second john's criticism regarding the server address (pop.example.com).
in my version, "smtp" instead of "sendmail" is displayed. this really refers to what is actually used by the user, so i can live with that.
Comment 24 Srinivasa Ragavan 2006-01-18 11:15:56 UTC
john, to answer the sendmail part, '/' is a bug. It should show the actual path. (Mailer bug, i guess so).

Nice point. It actually is a duplication of data. While scanning it also shows the server name. May be we should remove it then.

Sendmail is something that user selected in account creation page.
Comment 25 Calum Benson 2006-01-18 16:33:09 UTC
Other points aside, another option might be to put the account text inside the progress bar, then you have more room for the progress bars themselves, and it doesn't mess up the layout (or truncate some text, whichever you do) if the account details are wildly different lengths.

        +-----------------------------------------------+
[icon]  | Novell (imap): blr-dsmaster                   |  Complete
        +-----------------------------------------------+          

        +-----------------------------------------------+
[icon]  | My Gmail account (pop): pop.gmail.com    |++++|  [Cancel]
        +-----------------------------------------------+ 

or whatever.
Comment 26 Srinivasa Ragavan 2006-01-19 06:28:31 UTC
calum, are you sure this wont look ugly to have list of just icon progress bar and status at the right for 'n' account? 

It actually  shows 'Scanning Folders..." "Waiting..." etc etc. Any idea where to incorporate those messages? They also in the progress bar? Wont be tooo long then?
Comment 27 André Klapper 2006-02-11 17:41:14 UTC
i like the patch. changing patch status; setting priority - string freeze is on monday.
Comment 28 André Klapper 2006-02-12 17:23:22 UTC
regarding comment 22: the "/" string is bug 325835.
Comment 29 André Klapper 2006-02-13 14:05:24 UTC
since we're heading a string freeze in a few hours, and a whitespace in front of a colon is a bug, i submitted rohini's patch to cvs.

looks good in evolution (compiled and tested it), closing this as fixed.