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Bug 731181 - Support bottom-posting
Support bottom-posting
Status: RESOLVED OBSOLETE
Product: geary
Classification: Other
Component: composer
master
Other Linux
: Normal normal
: ---
Assigned To: Geary Maintainers
Geary Maintainers
: 714776 (view as bug list)
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
 
Reported: 2014-06-03 21:44 UTC by Jim Nelson
Modified: 2019-06-22 05:51 UTC
See Also:
GNOME target: ---
GNOME version: ---


Attachments
allow bottom posting (2.49 KB, patch)
2015-04-30 08:49 UTC, Kim Nguyen
none Details | Review

Description Jim Nelson 2014-06-03 21:44:47 UTC
Now that Geary has signature support, it's time to consider adding support for bottom-posting.  This means:

* A checkbox in the Accounts manager to enable/disable bottom-posting;
* when enabled, the signature is appended to the quoted email, not prepended,
* a two-dash separator is placed directly above the signature to separate it,
* and the cursor is placed directly above the signature but below the quoted text (with whatever scrolling is necessary to ensure the cursor is visible).

At this point I'm unsure if adding the separator to top-posted replies is necessary.  See discussion in comment 34 onward at bug #712895.
Comment 1 Robert Schroll 2014-06-03 22:15:39 UTC
One option I liked from Thunderbird was to start compositions with the quoted text selected.  Pressing up will move the cursor above it, for top-posting, pressing down would move the cursor to the bottom, for bottom-posting, and pressing delete would remove the quoted text.  Maybe we don't want exactly that method, but some sort of way to switch reply type quickly would be nice and let us avoid another setting.

Trying to handle signatures with this is a bit more tricky.  But I wonder, should we be adding the signatures when the composer is opened, or right before the message is sent?  It would take a bit more intelligence in the code, but I'm sure we could get it to put the signature in the right place based on the content of the message.
Comment 2 Jim Nelson 2014-06-03 22:36:33 UTC
That's interesting, I didn't noticed that about Thunderbird.  I do like how we have it today: I press Reply and can start typing right away.  I suspect we have users who rely on that.  (Was this an option in Thunderbird, or the default workflow?)

I wondered about adding the signature before transmission.  My biggest problem with that is we lose WYSIWYG editing.  I'm not sure I like the idea of Geary injecting text without the user seeing it.  Perhaps other clients do this, I don't know, I never was a big prepared-signature guy.
Comment 3 Robert Schroll 2014-06-03 23:05:55 UTC
This was a particular option in Thunderbird; other options we top- and bottom-posting.  I do like the composer being ready to type, but my default usage now is to hit delete twice and then scroll down to where I want to reply.  I wonder how it would feel if pressing down as soon as composer opened moved it to a bottom-posting configuration.

I'm not a signature user either, so I can't help there either.
Comment 4 Michael Gratton 2014-06-04 00:52:30 UTC
Relatedly, an extraordinarily useful feature when bottom posting is quoting only selected text in a message when replying:

1. Select text you want to reply to
2. Hit Reply - composer inserts only the selected text as a quote, positions cursor below it
3. Start typing

On the signature delimiter, I would argue it is still important to insert it even if top posting, since mailers and other software make use of it to know what is the body of the message and what isn't, and when top posting the quoted part pretty clearly isn't part of the message. For example, mailers use it to strip the signature when quoting the message, and bug trackers like Launchpad and Bugzilla use it to strip the signature from bug comments sent via email, reducing noise in the bug.

Also, on when to insert the signature - it is sometimes useful to be able to delete your signature before sending. If Geary inserted it on send, then users lose that ability.
Comment 5 Federico Bruni 2014-06-04 06:05:42 UTC
This is one of my most wanted features (along with reply quoting text, bug #712912).
Probably bug #714776 can be considered a duplicate of this one?
Comment 6 Jim Nelson 2014-06-10 19:25:55 UTC
*** Bug 714776 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 7 Robert Schroll 2015-01-27 06:44:23 UTC
My feeling is that the select-reply mechanism is support enough for bottom-posting.  Would anyone object to me closing this bug?
Comment 8 Jim Nelson 2015-01-27 20:47:59 UTC
Let's wait and see if others chime in, but I for one am fine closing this ticket.
Comment 9 Michael Gratton 2015-01-28 00:26:20 UTC
I'd like a pref to enable it all the time - I'm constantly forgetting to select some text before hitting reply, but can live with it as-is.
Comment 10 Jim Nelson 2015-01-28 02:08:37 UTC
Fair enough.  Let's leave it open then.
Comment 11 Kim Nguyen 2015-04-30 08:49:07 UTC
Hi,

unless I'm mistaken it's not really the same as select-reply, since there is no convenient way to select all the message we want to reply-to (even if your keyboard focus is on the message pane, which is not always the case, ctrl-a selects the whole conversation. So you really have to select all with the mouse which is cumbersome).

I've written a proof of concept patch that implements bottom posting.
It adds a new setting that is only exposed through dconf (no UI to argue about, yeah).

Possible improvement:
* scroll down the inline composer to where the cursor is. This is not too much of a problem since the CURSOR is correctly positionned above the signature and below the message, so as soon as you start typing, the pane will scroll down to where the cursor is.

The patch is so small that it seems a pity not to have implemented this already.
You may want to reword the dconf description string or the new property name though.

Patch is against master (commit:6eb437d7f)
Comment 12 Kim Nguyen 2015-04-30 08:49:41 UTC
Created attachment 302629 [details] [review]
allow bottom posting
Comment 13 Robert Schroll 2015-04-30 18:21:05 UTC
The OP suggests that this should be an account setting, but I don't know that I agree.  This seems like something a user would like for all (or none) of their accounts.  This should be relatively easy to hook up to a checkbox in the preferences menu, I would think.

A quick glance over the code looks good.  Haven't tried it yet.
Comment 14 Kim Nguyen 2015-06-07 09:10:56 UTC
Hi,

in order to maybe speed up integrating (or rejecting) this patch, I want to add that the logic to insert the cursor at the bottom of the quoted mail was  *already in place* in geary. I just added a dconf setting to select that case unconditionally. So the only real addition is this one liner:

-      if (quote != null)
+      if (quote != null || GearyApplication.instance.config.bottom_reply)


the rest is just XML to declare the schema and doc of the new setting and valla boilerplate to wrap the setting in the config object.
Comment 15 Robert Schroll 2015-06-08 16:52:18 UTC
Apologies -- I lost track of this bug.  Thanks for reminding us about it.

Two problems I note after a bit of testing:

1) There's no UI for this setting.  I don't think we should be recommending people muck about in dconf-editor to make this change.  Can we add an "Always reply below quote" checkbox to the preferences dialog?

2) The spacing around the quote is incorrect.  If you're bottom-posting, you don't need those two empty lines at the top.  We do need to add a new line or two at the bottom, so that you're not replying in the quote, as you are now.  You may be able to fix this by messing with the body_html variable just a few lines above the diff you just quoted, but you might need to alter RFC822.Utils.quote_email_for_reply.

We also need to get the scrolling worked out, but that's an existing problem and doesn't have to be solved here.
Comment 16 Robert Schroll 2015-06-08 21:29:37 UTC
Thinking about (2) a little more -- the right approach may be to remove the extra lines added in RFC822.Utils.quote_email_for_reply and instead put them in the right place in ComposerWidget.add_signature_and_cursor and ComposerWidget.set_cursor.
Comment 17 Kim Nguyen 2015-06-09 14:49:55 UTC
Thanks for the feedback. My first patch was just done as a proof of concept and also to see the reactions towards this feature.

My understanding is that provided that point (1) and (2) are addressed in a satisfactory manner (which may involve several iterations, since i'm no UI expert), this feature as a chance of being integrated (meaning Geary developpers have nothing against bottom posting) ?

If so, I'll start working on a patch and will attach it to this bug report when ready.
Comment 18 Robert Schroll 2015-06-10 01:48:30 UTC
If a bug is open, that means we will entertain patches that address the bug.  We won't necessarily accept any given patch, but we'll try to iterate with the submitter to get it into acceptable shape.  I can't promise in this case that just fixing (1) and (2) will be enough -- we could uncover another difficulty.  But I don't anticipate such a problem here.  As you said, we have the code for bottom posting mostly in place already.

Looking forward to seeing your patch.  We'll do our best to review it in a timely manner, but if you think it's gotten lost, don't be afraid to poke the bug again.
Comment 19 PJ 2015-06-13 23:42:44 UTC
Hi, I actually wrote this for myself (didn't look at bugzilla to search for existing report or patch originally). My patch is somewhat more complicated, see https://github.com/PJMODOS/geary/commit/1dd585792c085d882a9aaab427f67ec99f4c845e but maybe it's some use to somebody.
Comment 20 Robert Schroll 2015-06-14 22:36:45 UTC
PJ: That looks like what I was recommending with quote_email_for_reply and set_cursor.

I'm skeptical that we need an always-top-post option.  I'm not sure I've ever seen someone top post while quoting only part of a message.  But you're welcome to try to convince me otherwise.
Comment 21 Michael Gratton 2019-06-22 05:51:23 UTC
Closing in favour of https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/geary/issues/471