Re: [Evolution] Modify incoming messages

[Eric Lambart <lambart got net>]

On Wed, 2001-09-05 at 10:34, Mark Neill wrote:
> > What I and Cyril (?) were talking about is the ability to edit the
> > subject and body of a message that's in your Inbox or another folder.  I
> > spoke of being able to clean up a message you're planning to keep a copy
> > of, but another useful purpose (thinking of snail-mail analogies, here)
> > would be to annotate an informative message with your own notes.
>
> Um, maybe this is just my opinion, but this is _so_ not in the realm of a
> mail client.
>
> If you're going to edit, annotate, and otherwise turn into a document, a
> mail message, then you should export it and use your preferred editor on
> it.  Why would you want a monolithic file editor-mail program-etc-etc-etc?

Because we're talking messages here, not abstract, independent
documents.

For instance I may want to archive your useful tip about how to do
such-and-such in linux (say, into folder called a "linux tips"), but you
wrote it as part of a long-lived thread and the Subject of your message 
has _nothing_ to do with that juicy tidbit I'm interested in.  I want to
change the Subject field so that it says something like "tripwire
configuration tips" instead of "Re: Re: Fwd: Re: strange errors when
running diff".

This is the sort of thing I am used to keeping a mail folder for.  It
would be very inconvenient to have to save it as a text file, annotate
it, and then store it away in some hidden corner of my home directory. 
I could forward it to myself and edit it, but then I lose the fact that
you wrote the message, and I might be trying to find something that I
know Mark wrote.

> Again, this is just my opinion, but I think this is a bad direction to go
> in...:)

Of course I am only expressing my opinion as well, but I'm not even
asking for a "monolithic file editor-mail program-etc-etc-etc".  The
last thing I want is bloatware... but we're not even talking about
adding significant functionality here.  Evo already has (via gtkhtml)
(near-)perfect message editing functionality.  It's just a matter of
allowing the user to invoke it on a received message, and then to
re-save that message.

I, not unlike many folks I know, save a lot of messages that I receive. 
Among othe rthings, it's nice to be able to trim the fat and just save
the information you really need.  If the MUA were to track and display
something to the effect that the "original message has been modified", I
wouldn't mind... in fact that would be even better!

--Eric