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

[Pete Biggs <pete biggs org uk>]

On Wed, 2011-10-26 at 20:30 +0200, Dan Vratil wrote:
> On Wednesday 26 of October 2011 19:01:14 Pete Biggs wrote:
> > > But I'd like to hear from all of you what do you think about the

> > Is it possible in the re-write to include selecting different formats -
> > preferably at print-time, but possibly in the setup?  How about
> > user-defined formats?
>
> What exactly do you mean by format? Something like templates? I don't see much 
> use in it.

By "format" I mean the way the print out is formatted - I suppose yes,
template would be an equivalent - I just come from a Fortran background.

>  Let's make one perfect design instead of many average designs. 

Well yes, a good ideal, but I doubt it is really achievable.  I suspect
that the programmers and designers of all the examples you gave have
been through a similar process - with the commercial ones like Outlook
and Gmail there has probably been such things as design panels,
usability experts, and, shudder, focus groups involved in it, and they
still come up with different formats.

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.

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

> 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.

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?

>  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"?

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.