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

[Kåre Fiedler Christiansen <fedora kaarefc dk>]

On Wed, 2011-10-26 at 19:14 +0200, Dan Vratil wrote:

<snip>

> But I'd like to hear from all of you what do you think about the proposed 
> look, what would you change or keep, or remove... I have printed the email in 
> various mail clients so that you can compare it and find some inspiration :)
>
> Evolution - new look: http://pub.progdan.cz/evo/evo-webkit.pdf

Is this the same email as the others? I ask because of the
"attachment.html" attachment that does not seem present in the others.
Also, there is no attachment named "lipsum.txt", though the text is
there.

The body of the text: Will you honour the font choice used for
displaying mail, when the mail is not preformatted? I'm thinking mostly
of whether it monospaced or variable width?

I like the fact that quoted text is slightly greyed; signatures after
"-- " should be as well.

I miss header for the lipsum.txt-attachment. Is this simply because it
is a mockup and forgotten, or do you expect the textual attachments to
have no headers? I would much prefer they do.

I notice the size says "0 bytes", but I assume that's unrelated to the
layout?

It's annoying to me the way the attachment names break in the icon list
of attachments, and I doubt the value of the icons - if they were
miniatures it might make sense, but as it stands it looks like a waste
of space in the printout. I would prefer as much of the actual content
of the email to be on the first page (while still having a decent
layout, and not advocating eliminating all whitespace or something), and
the list of attachments seems to obstruct that. Perhaps simply a marker
that there are attachments at the top (icon or "3 attachments"), and the
actual attachments at the bottom with or wotihout the list of
attachments first?
Also, information about the attachments are spread out all over the
place, file names at top, titles with the attachments.

I notice you simply ignore the digital signature. Suggestion: Why not
add it as an emblem in the headers?

There are no headers or footers. Page numbers are important, I think,
but it would be even better with the subject in the footer as well, so a
lost page of an email could be identified easily.

> Evolution - current look: http://pub.progdan.cz/evo/evo-master.pdf

Good: Attachments presented at bottom with available info, page numbers,
digital signature is shown.
Bad: Very poor use of margins, much too little whitespace around
attahcments/sections. Very wide line spacing.

I'm torn whether it's good or bad that plain text attachments are
monospaced. If it's code or tabular, I would much prefer it, if it's
English (or borken latin...) text it makes sense to use variable width.
Could be decided by mime-type?

> KMail 2 (KDE 4.7.2): http://pub.progdan.cz/evo/kmail.pdf

I just *love* a printout with the text "Please wait while the signature
is being verified..."

Good: Very condensed, prominent subject.
Bad: Attachment info different: images below, text above; I don't like
the grey background for the box.

Again, I'm torn about the monospaced quality, but that's an issue I have
with email generally :-) Certainly, the printout looks blocky and is
much prettier with variable width fonts, but monospaced text sometimes
contains formatting that is lost when going variable width.

> Thunderbird 7.0.1: http://pub.progdan.cz/evo/thunderbird.pdfhttp://pub.progdan.cz/evo/thunderbird.pdf

Good: I like the attachment presentation, except the title is missing.
Images are centered, much prettier! I like the list of attachments at
the very end, easy to look at the very end of the email to scan for a
certain attachment.
Bad: Headers and footers much too close to edge of paper, date in footer
seems to be date of printing, not date of email?

> GMail: http://pub.progdan.cz/evo/gmail.pdf

Good: Very good header (except GMail logo is waste of space), nice large
readable subject with other info condensed but available.
Bad: Completely impossible to see that the text is from an attachment,
attachment presentation is just horrible, everything jumps around.

> MS Outlook 2007: http://pub.progdan.cz/evo/outlook.pdf

Good: No
Bed: Yes

:-)

How can they simply *ignore* attachments? Oh - they are not completely
ignored, at least they are almost invisibly mentioned in headers...

> I like the idea of the big header in MS Outlook, just instead of recipient's 
> name I'd rather put there subject of the email, because when you have a pile 
> of printed emails on the table, you most probably want to search by their 
> subject. Seeing your name in big letters on every email makes no sense to me.

Agree, I like GMails look that way.

> Attachments. I actually don't like the way any of the clients handle 
> attachments (maybe Thunderbird...). Listing of attachments is ugly and the 
> title of every attachment is quite ugly as well. I'm proposing the top panel 
> with attachment icons and names (which is actually very similar to the 
> attachment bar you can see in Evolution in the email preview pane) and then 
> having a big distinguishible header above each attachment with more detailed 
> informations, or maybe just a horizontal line with small attachment title and 
> additional informations.

I think I covered it in my ramblings above, but basically I don't like
the icon top bar, it takes too much space and the icons seem not to add
any value. Also, info is spread out all over the place.

> So guys, what do you think? What would you like to see in Evo-printing :) ?

Well, that's my opinions. Hope you can use it.

Best,
  KÃre