GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 602612
Add 'Alternative Reply' menu option
Last modified: 2018-03-12 13:50:56 UTC
Evolution should have an easy way to change the format of a reply. "Forward as" let you choose between Attached, Inline & Quoted, while for Reply, you have to go to the prefs. I often have to switch between Inline and Quoted depending on the recipients. For work, it's often better to use Inline so it doesn't break the thread, while for multiple answers, mailing lists, etc, quoted is best as you can remove the unnecessary parts. Most of the time, I hit the reply or reply all button just to realize i'm in the wrong format, so i have to close the Editing window, ack the discard, go change the prefs, and restart with my reply. Then, with the next mail, i have to change back to the other format. I do that a dozen times a day. Something in the UI would be nice. (if there's already a way to do this, it's not obvious, i didn't find it) [ Evolution 2.28.1 ]
Matt, will it be good to add reply style in tool bar like you did for forward. Or at least in menu > message
I don't think so, the issues are orthogonal. Forward has both -method- and -style- options. The method options are what's listed in the toolbar. Reply also has method options in the form of "Reply to Sender", "Reply to All" and "Reply to List". Style options for both replies and forwards are a totally different can of worms, and have to be managed separately. We can't put it in the main menu because the menu options would grow exponentially: Message -> Reply to Sender with Attachment Style Message -> Reply to Sender with Inline Style Message -> Reply to Sender with Quoted Style Message -> Reply to All with Attachment Style Message -> Reply to All with Inline Style Message -> Reply to All with Quoted Style ... A different approach would be to break Forward Style and Reply Style into submenus of radio items: Message -> Reply Style -> (o) Attachment ( ) Inline ( ) Quoted Message -> Forward Style -> (o) Attachment ( ) Inline ( ) Quoted But the Message menu is already cluttered enough as is, and I'm not convinced it would be any more convenient than having to go to Preferences. The third and to me the most viable approach would be to introduce a new style choice called "Always Ask", which would do just that: present a dialog when you click Reply or Forward asking what style you would like to use (setting your last choice as default, of course). Fabien, does this sound okay to you or do you have any alternate ideas?
Some further thoughts: If we go the "Always Ask" route, what would be cool is to show the "Choose a Style" dialog over top the composer window. It would have to block the composer window so the user cannot change anything until he chooses a reply or forward style. But then we could actually preview the style in the composer window, and have it change as the user selects different style options in the dialog. An additional idea is to add a "Use this style from now on" checkbox in the dialog, which when checked would change the style preference from "Always Ask" to whatever the user decided on. We could even set the preference default to "Always Ask" for new installs, so new users are always prompted at least the first time they click Reply or Forward. I think that would be a really nice interaction.
My initial idea was either a drop down menu in the tool bar similar to the one available for Compose (but i understand your point against it), or a way to change the formating directly in the Reply window, similar to the HTML vs Plain Text knob. But it nothing else, the "Always Ask" way would work for me far better than the prefs way.
The problem with having a knob directly in the reply window is we can't change reply styles on the fly like we can with Plain Text vs. HTML. All of your edits up to that point would have to be thrown out. So the choice has to be made before you start editing.
This might be partly addressed with bug #513779, which will add Reply style setting per account. It doesn't cover the mailing lists from one account, of course. I think the ideal solution would be to not ask for each reply, it might be better to combine the setting per recipient, account and the default, in the order of precedence: - any recipient has set preferred reply style (if more recipients have set the reply style, then skip this rule) - the account has set reply style, then use it - use the one from preferences Of course, this would add more complicated setting into the Preferences, at least for the first rule (for recipients). I would think of moving Edit->Preferences->Composer Preferences->General tab->Replies and Forwards section into a separate tab, where the extra setting for "Reply style for Recipients" would reside, though the UI might look odd. I'm not sure.
*** Bug 793287 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Some time passed, some ideas changed. The "always ask" approach sounds interesting, but I'd rather make it different. What about adding a new option into menu "Alternate Reply (Alt+Ctrl+R)"; the shortcut seems to be free and it reflects the idea of alternate replies. This would open a dialog, where one will pick: ------------------------------------------------------------------- Recipients: (o) Reply to Sender (<address>) ( ) Reply to List (<address>) ( ) Reply to All Style: (o) Default (<which it is>) ( ) Attachment ( ) Inline (Outlook style) ( ) Quote ( ) Do Not Quote Apply template: [ None | v ] [ Reply ] [ Cancel ] ------------------------------------------------------------------- Where the recipients will be chosen as "would be the best" (like when replying to a message with a List-Id header, then the "Reply to List" will be preselected). The idea behind "Style: Default" is to show that the changes here will not be saved, the 'Alternate Reply' is just an override of the set behaviour. Finally, the "Apply template" is a combo, where users can use templates for Replies easily. The issue with "Ask Always" is that it could irritate after some time, thus users would tick "do not ask again" and then resolve back to "change in preferences". This 'Alternate Reply' would be called explicitly by the user and be always there, just one key-press away.
Sounds good to me. Could the options above include top/bottom posting style as well? Also, can this be activated by pressing Alt key and then clicking the regular buttons as well (think power button in Gnome system menu)?
(In reply to Bojan Smojver from comment #9) > Could the options above include top/bottom posting style as well? Maybe, though that option is read from preferences after the related entry points. > Also, can this be activated by pressing Alt key and then clicking > the regular buttons as well (think power button in Gnome system menu)? It's not that easy, because the buttons are actions and as such one doesn't know whether it had been activated by a mouse click or by a key press. And users can change shortcuts for the actions.
Okay, I made this pretty close to the above "picture" (comment #8). Two options had been added [-] Format message in HTML [-] Start typing at the bottom which are three-state options, where the inconsistent state means "as account/global options are set". I added also an option for templates: [ ] Preserve original message subject which causes to use "Re: $SUBJECT" as the subject, instead of Template's Subject, thus templates can be named according to their content with this option. Everything is saved into the settings, except of the chosen option for Recipients, which is guessed based on the source message content (whether Reply to List is preferred over Reply to All depends on "Group reply goes only to mailing list, if possible" option in Composer Preferences). I didn't do the Alt key trick when clicking buttons, instead, the toolbar has: [ Reply ] [ Group Reply ] [ v ] [ Forward ] [ v ] and the dropdown ("[ v ]") beside Group Reply contains Reply to All, Reply to List and Alternative Reply options (it already contained the first two). Message menu also contains the Alternative Reply option. Apart of the Subject with the templates, they work differently also with respect of the Recipients (with compare of Right-click message->Templates->...). With Alternative Reply the recipients set in the template are ignored (to/cc/postto), those set at the top of the Alternative Reply window are used instead. When talking about the Recipients section, the labels beside the radios contain hints, and the Reply to All has a label with "N recipients" and the hint above it shows respective addresses. The patch has slightly more than 126KB, thus I'm not attaching it here. I'll commit the change some time next week (after the 3.28.0 release and when the sources will be branched).
(In reply to Milan Crha from comment #11) > [-] Start typing at the bottom Quick question on this option. This option will will have the opposite value (i.e. start typing at the top) if the default setting is to start typing at the bottom, right? PS. Totally unrelated to above question, I was thinking about the composer option of "Keep signature above the original message". Wouldn't it make sense to have an option that says "Keep signature with reply text", so that signature goes to top/bottom based on the reply style?
(In reply to Bojan Smojver from comment #12) > > [-] Start typing at the bottom > > Quick question on this option. This option will will have the opposite value > (i.e. start typing at the top) if the default setting is to start typing at > the bottom, right? It's a three-state option, meaning: [x] start at the bottom [ ] start at the top [-] use settings default, which means for the chosen account (which is also three-state option, with its [-] being use global option). In other words, all the options in the 'Alternative Reply' can either follow account/global options or they override them completely. I forgot to mention one thing, when using "Apply template", some options like the Reply Style and this "start at the bottom", are disabled, because they have no meaning when using templates. > PS. Totally unrelated to above question, I was thinking about the composer > option of "Keep signature above the original message". Wouldn't it make > sense to have an option that says "Keep signature with reply text", so that > signature goes to top/bottom based on the reply style? Maybe. But I'm afraid that would be too complicated to understand by the regular users. Anyway, when you use Inline (Outlook) style, then the "Start at bottom" doesn't apply. Intentionally. Thus the start at bottom is basically useful only for the Quoted style.
(In reply to Milan Crha from comment #13) > > option of "Keep signature above the original message". Wouldn't it make > > sense to have an option that says "Keep signature with reply text", so that > > signature goes to top/bottom based on the reply style? > > Maybe. But I'm afraid that would be too complicated to understand by the > regular users. Anyway, when you use Inline (Outlook) style, then the "Start > at bottom" doesn't apply. Intentionally. Thus the start at bottom is > basically useful only for the Quoted style. I was just talking about signature there, not the quoting style. Along the lines of what you can find in word processor - keep with next, when setting paragraph properties. In this case, signature would be kept with reply text. Meaning, if style is bottom posting, signature goes to the bottom, after reply text. If style is top posting, signature goes above quoted text and after reply text. To be honest, this should probably be a default anyway. :-)
I can add "Keep signature above the original message" option into the "Alternative Reply", the same as it already is in account properties, but I didn't want to encourage its usage. It's a bad idea to have the signature at the top. There can be added even more options to the 'Alternative Reply' dialog, there's a room for it and the way I changed the API counts with it, especially for boolean options. Non-boolean options are more complicated.
Sorry, I think I was not clear in what I said. My suggestion about signature options is totally unrelated to alternative reply. I meant this as a general suggestion for preferences. Usually, one wants to keep their signature right after the text they just wrote. In a long thread with lots of included replies, it makes is clearer who wrote what. Sorry for abusing an unrelated bug report for this suggestion. I was just trying to make sure I don't forget.
Created commit 7b8e53dd14 in evo master (3.29.1+)