Re: [Evolution] Request for additions/corrections in Evolution

[Dan Hensley <dan hensley attbi com>]

On Wed, 2002-05-29 at 22:19, David Hoover wrote:
> Isn't syntax highlighting more or less by definition, "be[ing] smart on
> arbitrary text that someone ... wrote"?
>
> Like when I use vim to edit my mailspool, and it's able to color it, and
> make citations cyan, based solely on the text?
>
> Correct me if I'm wrong but you're saying these two cases are
> "completely separate issue[s]":
>         1. vim (a text editor) looks at some arbitrary text in its
>            buffer (which was typed, or read from a file, or whatever)
>            and it goes "Hey, I've been told to color this using my rules
>            for coloring email, so if it starts with >, make it cyan"
>         2. Evolution's mail composer (a text editor) has to look at some
>            arbitrary text in its buffer (which was typed, or included
>            when you hit reply, or whatever), and goes "Hey, I'm coloring
>            this using my rules for coloring email (since that's all I
>            ever do), so if it starts with >, make it cyan"
>
> How is it a completely separate issue? One's a text editor that has
> zillions of different rules to be able to syntax highlight any of a
> number of different text formats, and the other is a very specialized
> text editor, which would only need one set of rules explaining how to
> syntax highlight one type of text.

I've only vaguely been paying attention to this thread so others may
have already discussed this, but here's where it gets vague IMHO.  Since
Evo uses an HTML editor, when you send the mail, does the colored text
get sent as colored HTML (assuming you're not just sending plain text)? 
This would NOT be the desired behavior, IMHO, since the original text
was not colored.  But what if the text is colored to begin with?  Should
Evo color it based on its quoting rules for visual display, or leave
colored text alone?  It seems like it could get ambiguous as to what the
text color is when you actually send the e-mail.

As far as color-coding anyway, the quoted text in my reply window shows
up as gray (which is probably configurable somewhere), and my text is
black.  So it's at least smart enough to show that.

Dan