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

[Paul Smith <paul mad-scientist net>]

On Wed, 2010-07-14 at 20:47 +0200, Kåre Fiedler Christiansen wrote:
> > A preference that lets you select your preferred default "reply
> > publicly" operation would be nice as well (I think we have something
> > like that for forward).  The values could be "Best effort" (default),
> > "All recipients", etc.
>
> That might actually be complicating things a bit too much, though. But
> if it was implemented, it could be that one option was to make it reply
> _privately_. (In that case it's name couldn't be "Reply Publicly",
> though).

No, I don't agree with this.

Today we have two buttons and two _main_ shortcuts: the buttons are
"reply", which results in "Reply to Sender" (Ctrl-R) in the menu, and
"Reply to All" button and menu item (Shift-Ctrl-R).

I'm not talking, myself, about any change to the "reply to
sender"/Ctrl-R capability.  Others have discussed trying to make it
smarter in the face of reply-to munging by mailing lists; that would be
nice but I'll leave that to others (I guess I just don't subscribe to
any lists that do this so it doesn't bother me :-)).

What I'm suggesting is that we retarget "Reply to All" (Shift-Ctrl-R)
and the button to be, instead "Reply Publicly" (or you can keep it named
"Reply to All" for all I care).  This button would DTRT based on the
message, to send a public reply.  So, in this mode replies to mailing
lists with List-Post headers would go there only.  Otherwise it behaves
as today.

There are other ways that "reply publicly" might be implemented, just
like there are multiple ways "forward message" might be implemented, and
I suggested that we can have a drop-down list next to the "reply
publicly" button allowing, on a per-instance basis, a different choice,
similar to the one we have today for "forward message".

I further suggested that we might allow the user to choose a preferred
way to "reply publicly", similar to how we allow them to choose a
preferred method for forwarding.  If changed, this would be the way the
button (and Ctrl-R) would behave, but the drop-down list would still be
there.


> Sure. It's really a matter of presentation rather than basic
> functionality, but if it makes it easier to use I'm all for it. I don't
> think this contradicts anything we've said up to now. Correct me if I'm
> wrong.

Well, this whole thing is mostly a matter of presentation :-).  Anyway,
as above there is one difference; I'm suggesting that the default key
sequence (Shift-Ctrl-R) (and button, for those that care) for "reply to
all" be made to run the user's preferred "reply publicly" method, which
would default to "smart reply" (which is basically what in Dave's
suggestion was going to bind to Ctrl-L).

Basically I want the simple, straightforward, uncustomized operations
that everyone uses to do the smart thing, where that is not egregiously
bad (like potentially sending private replies to public lists).  That
means the standard keybindings, standard buttons, standard menu items.

Then we can add customizations etc. for those who know better or have
more advanced needs.

What happens to other keybindings like Ctrl-L, I'm not sure.


Anyway, that's my $0.02.