Re: [Evolution] Reply for list messages should go back to the list

[Nick Jenkins <nickpj gmail com>]

> I almost never use the buttons so that's irrelevant to me.

I quite like the toolbar buttons, and people who are newer to Evo will
probably use them more too. So maybe the toolbar buttons can be changed,
but only when there's the appropriate list headers? Example toolbar
buttons:

Normal email: [ Reply ] [ Reply to All ] [ Forward ]  ....
A list email: [ Private Reply ] [ Reply to List ] [ Reply to All ] [ Forward ] ....

I'd even be tempted to swap the order, for list emails, so that the most
common action is on the left, namely:
A list email: [ Reply to List ] [ Private Reply ] [ Reply to All ] [ Forward ] ....
(although I'm not sure about this)

I'd also be tempted to get rid of "Reply to All" for list emails, so as
to stop the toolbar width from expanding excessively, and since most
people CC'ed to a list email will also be subscribers to that email
list:
A list email: [ Reply to List ] [ Private Reply ] [ Forward ] ....

So that'd leave toolbar buttons something like this:
Normal email: [ Reply ] [ Reply to All ] [ Forward ]  ....
A list email: [ Reply to List ] [ Private Reply ] [ Forward ] ....

Main criticisms of this that I can think of are:
* It changes the toolbar buttons based on message content, so potential
to confuse people (although I think making the buttons appropriate for
the message might outweigh this).
* The functions of the "reply to all" and "private reply" buttons are
almost the opposite of each other, but yet they occupy the exact same
toolbar position for the different message types. (So perhaps "Private
Reply" should be to the left of "Reply to List"?)
* There's no toolbar button for reply to the list and cc'ing everyone
that was cc'ed to the message that you received. (Is this something we
should care about, when this functionality is available through the
menu? Toolbars are just for the most common actions, not for every
possible action.)

> a button added that has "Reply To List" that would 
> be greyed out when the message is not from a list (that
> would satisfy the idiots).

I don't think a "Reply to List" toolbar button should be shown at all if
it's not relevant to the message. Different toolbar buttons, depending
on whether it's a list message or not, might possibly be better. Screen
space is valuable, as is the effort required to build a mental model of
what the toolbar buttons mean (which is IMHO why the "Cancel" toolbar
button should be removed, since it's scary looking, since it's unclear
what it's cancelling if you have multiple simultaneous operations
running, and since it often doesn't work anyway as there seem to be some
operations that cannot be cancelled).

> Remember, there are three different things which are affected...
> *keystroke* *menu item* *button*

... and I only rarely use keystroke or menu item, so no opinion on
those.

> I don't know about anyone else but I'm a bit lost.  It seems like 
> it shouldn't be too difficult to collect all the current relevant
> behaviour into one table and then produce a second table showing
> the suggested new behaviour.  If we kept that and continued to 
> update it I think more people would be able to follow the discussion
> and comment on it.

Yes, that would help. A table showing the current behaviour versus most
up-to-date suggested new behaviour would be much clearer.

-- All the best,
Nick.