Re: [Evolution] How do you want printed emails to look like?

[Dan Vratil <dvratil redhat com>]

On Thursday 27 of October 2011 08:44:30 Pete Biggs wrote:
> [cut]
>
> All I was really thinking about was being able to have a choice of, say,
> 3 or 4 different layouts of the email printout that the user can choose
> from - ranging from a compact utilitarian format to a more presentable
> format for showing clients; perhaps a coloured version as well as
> monochrome.  That sort of thing.  Since this is largely CSS driven, then
> the different formats shouldn't be too much extra programming.
>
> For the user defined formats all I was thinking was allowing companies
> to put their own corporate branding on email print outs.

I'm not strictly against this idea (I just fear the day someone brings me an 
email printed in Comic Sans with pink headers and frame of hearts) but the 
thing is that this is not as simple as it sounds and I'm not sure if it's 
worth the effort and if I have enough time for this till 3.4.

> The alternative is, of course to have a single format that is
> distinctively and recognisably Evolution.

"Oh my, this email looks so beautiful, you /must/ be using Evolution!" :)

> > > Also what about selecting what to print - i.e. which headers, or
> > > which
> > > attachments?
> >
> > You can either print all headers or standard headers (From, To, Date,
> > Subject, CC) which I'd call absolute minimum for determining context of
> > the email. Any other headers are usually not user-friendly and make no
> > sense to be printed unless you really really want them and then 'all
> > headers' is the right choice.
> If someone wishes to give the printout to a third party, then it may not
> be appropriate to include things like email addresses on the printout,
> that's all.

Hmm, good point. It could be done - see below.

> > If you want to print a particular attachment, you can print it
> > individually via it's popup menu.
>
> It was more to stop the printing of some attachments - in the example
> you gave, the image attachments are printed along with the text - some
> MUAs, especially some of the webmail clients, are keen to liberally
> splatter stupid icons and advertising all over the mail.  It would be
> good to be able to not print those for example.

Meditate on this, I will.

> Also, what determines which attachments are printed and which aren't?
> Obviously, as per your example, images are printed - but what about PDF
> attachments? Or text attachments?

We print only attachments that we are able to "inline" - render in a HTML 
page. AFAIK WebKit can't render PDF on it's own. Basically we display only 
images, plain text, richtext and html files.

> >  These additional options would made the printing process
> >
> > more complicated by adding at least one more dialog, since we can't
> > change the default "Printing" dialog.
>
> Ah, OK. So there is no way of inserting extra options into the
> (presumably) Gnome print dialogue box?  Can there be an extra context
> menu item for the email of "print with options" along side the standard
> "print"?

I took a better look and actually it's possible to add custom tab to 
GtkPrintUnixDialog. For start I could add at least the configurable headers.

> But none of these things are show stoppers - the quest is, as you say,
> for the ideal system.  But everything is a compromise, and if in the end
> it's too complicated to put in to Evo, then that's fine.  Ultimately I
> would prefer a more compact design over a spread out one.
>
> P.
>
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