Suggestion: "Notify of new mail when Geary is not open"?

I'll admit that I didn't know what this option did.  I assumed "startup"
referred to Geary, not the system.  The simplest change would be to say "Notify
of new mail at system startup".  But maybe something like "Watch for new mail
at login" would be better.

I like the positive-action of Robert's suggestion.  How about "Watch for new mail when logged in"?

I think my suggestion is more clear ("logged in to what?"), but Robert's is a big improvement over the current text so +1 from me FWIW.

I didn't like the login term either...I think that's why we went with "startup" originally.

Two new proposals from me:

"Notify of new mail when closed" with the tooltip "Geary will run in the background and watch for new mail"  The hope here is if the primary text isn't sufficient, the tooltip will answer the question.  This is Michael's text but trimmed a bit and avoiding the negative.

If we're comfortable with people understanding "background" in this context, my other proposal is "Run in the background and notify of new mail" with no tooltip.

I made a command decision and went this this:

"Always watch for new mail"

with the tooltip:

"Geary will run in the background and notify of new mail"

More than happy to keep discussing this, but I'm closing this for now.

Pushed to master, commit acd3f0

*** Bug 749812 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

hi Jim

thx for the best email client on linux!

when i saw  "Always watch for new mail" in the Preferences dialog it's purpose was very unclear to me. i thought, "of course i want to always watch for new mail! What else?"

So i activated it. 

Later i noticed geary was launching on system boot. I found this very annoying, as i do not appreciate non-system apps which start on system boot without my knowledge or permission. 

Your verbiage "Always watch for new mail" did not communicate to me that it really means "launch geary on system boot." As a user, this seems at best like a completely inaccurate and unclear choice of words, or at worst an attempt by the developers to trick users to launch gear at system boot. 

Please change "Always watch for new mail" in the Preferences dialog to "Automatically start geary on operating-system startup." 

I cannot speak for other users, but i really appreciate alert messages which say what they mean. 

thx!

also, as a result of geary starting without my permission, i had to come here to the bug reporter to say "hey guys, geary is starting without my permission, please don't do that,  provide an option in preferences to start on boot". 

thx

https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=749812

I see two problems with "Automatically start geary on operating-system startup."

1) Users may interpret this to mean that the geary window will be started and feel it is broken that they still have to "launch Geary" to see their mail.

2) This option also keeps Geary from exiting when the main window is closed.

"Always watch for new mail" is a good description; we just have to figure out how to emphasize that "always" really means "always".

Did you notice the tooltip on this option when you first played with it?  I wonder if a longer description there would be of any help or not.

i need to state this more firmly, so the devs understand how strong i feel about this (and i believe other users will too): i object to an extreme degree to software which loads on boot without my knowledge or permission. I'm not talking about core OS libraries and such. Geary is not a core OS lib. 

as far as i am concerned, user-software which loads without my permission or knowledge is treating me with DISRESPECT. And i believe a lot of linux users (unlike windows users) will feel the same. 

the reason i HATE windows is because it is loaded with lots of that kind of JUNK. 

I'm not saying geary should not run on boot-- only that the users have a right to know. The verbiage you are suggesting is not just "user-friendly"-- it's MISLEADING and DISHONEST. Maybe you don't intend that, but it is. Any software that MISLEADS me about what it is doing is UNTRUSTWORTHY. 

What else are you lying to me about? Harvesting my contacts for spam? Installing malware on my computer?

Until geary tells me HONESTLY what it is doing in the background of MY operating system, i will express myself on this topic. 


Robert Schroll [geary developer] wrote:
"Users may interpret this to mean that the geary window will be started and feel it is broken that they still have to "launch Geary" to see their mail."


  --- Then you can say "Run geary in the background on system boot, to alert you on new emails?" In which case, geary SHOULD display an icon in the system tray. 


Robert Schroll [geary developer] wrote:
"This option also keeps Geary from exiting when the main window is closed."


  --- No it doesn't. Saying something in a dialog box does not make geary do anything. It's just a user-message. 

However, geary will keep running in the background, if that's how you program (REGARDLESS of what verbiage you use in preferences). 

What i think users would appreciate is an additional preference: "Keep geary running in taskbar on close yes/no", like Outlook and other clients do. 

Respectfully.

and thank you again for your emphasis on performance and simplicity!

sorry for strong language in last post, my bad :/

hi

i think i would prefer 2 separate options:

- launch on start (yes/no)
- run in system tray on start/close (yes/no)

invisible seems undesirable in any scenario.

thx!

(sorry again for strong expression above)

fyi, eM client installer asks "start eM when you start windows?" yes/no

I agree with Johny: the current wording is quite misleading. I've recently started a discussion about this on the mailing list:
https://mail.gnome.org/archives/geary-list/2017-December/msg00026.html

Let me list the main points from that discussion.

Why the current wording does not communicate well, for me:

"""
Don't you think that the Preference option "Always watch for new mail" is a bit misleading? This is normally understood (e.g. in Thunderbird) as: you don't need to press a button to download new mail, the application will do it for you. But this is what Geary always does by default (and you cannot change it).
"""


In the thread follow-ups Mike suggested an alternative:

"""
A different approach altogether would be to remove the auto-start aspect, but keep the hidden-in-the background feature, and let people manage launching it themselves — either by launching Geary manually or by using their desktop's built-in tools/preferences to enable it to auto-start.
"""


Finally I made this proposal:

"""
For me the purpose of "always watch for new mail" was downloading messages while I was doing something else, so when I opened Geary I didn't have to wait for the sync and I could start reading right away. I have the feeling that this may be the main feature to offer, and leave the other options (launch at login, notifications) handled by the desktop as in any other app. No overlap of configurations: if I can enable/disable the same configuration in two different places, it's going to be a mess.

This is what I would describe as:
Preference: "Keep downloading new mail after quitting"

Tooltip: "Let the application run in background when closed; new mail will be ready to be read right away."

(too long tooltip, I know, but I'm sure you can find better wordings...)
"""

From the mailing list, the plan is probably as follows:

1. Change the pref and tooltip text as follows:
   - Preference: Watch for new mail when closed
   - Tooltip: Geary will keep running after all windows are closed
2. Stop managing autostart at all and let people use their own desktop's tools to do so
3. Remove the --hidden command line argument
4. Disable Quit in the app menu or replace with with Close All when the pref is enabled
5. Update the user manual accordingly

Actually I'll probably keep the --hidden arg, it would be useful for backwards compatibility and testing.

Another wrinkle that Kurshid mentioned on the list is ensuring the main window is not shown on startup, which is of course why --hidden exists. This is problematic in that if Geary is configured to be launched at login by copying its standard desktop entry (as would be the case if someone ised used Gnome Tweak to ensure it is launched at login), then a main window will appear.

So removing the autostart manager is going to require some more work, and to be honest I'm now wondering if Quit should stay and actually quit the whole process, including background daemon.

I've just filed Bug 792406 to cover all this. Here I'll just update the text of the prefs, manual and tooltip.

Update prefs text, tooltip and manual text pushed to master as commit 8b42ced.