Re: [Evolution] Query about editing quoted text in Plain Text mode

[mh mike franken de (Michael Hirmke)]

Hi Milan,

>       Hello,
> for the background: WebKitGTK+ deprecated C DOM API few releases back,
> thus I'm slowly changing the code to use JavaScript Core API instead.
> The preview panel is done for the upcoming 3.36.0 and I'm slowly
> fighting with the editor part. There will be some functionality dropped
> and some (I hope good) added. I'd like to depend on WebKitGTK+'s
> functionality as much as possible, which has its pros and cons.

> My current query is:

> Is editing of quoted text in the Plain Text mode used?

yes, I use it always, because I only use plain text whenever possible.

> What do you expect from it?

Nothing special - correct line breaks perhaps.

> Tomas Popela (continued the work started by Dan Vratil) did a great job
> in preserving the behavior as close as possible to what users were used
> to from times of GtkHTML, where editing text in quotation kept the
> quote character ('>') at the beginning of the line when the paragraph
> text had been changing. That's fairly complex code to maintain, thus
> I'm thinking of dropping it, instead of rewriting it in JavaScript.

Uh, that would be a real bad loss 8-<

> Without it the quote characters would be there, but they will be like
> any other text, possible to edit/remove and so on. They would be
> switched to 'blockquote' when changing format to HTML and back to quote
> character on change to Plain Text mode.

I could live with it, but it would make things much less comfortable.

> I checked some other GUI editors what they do with quoted text in the
> Plain Text mode and this is what I found:

> * Thunderbird (68.4.1) - does nothing when editing it, only
>   re-wrapping function can fix/add quote character;
> * SeaMonkey (2.49.5) - works pretty much the same as Thunderbird;
> * KMail (5.11.3) - does nothing when editing; has in Edit menu
>   "Add/Remove Quote Character";
> * Claws Mail (3.17.4) - keeps quoted text quoted while typing new text
>   (when long lines are wrapped), but not when deleting quoted text.

You shouldn't use bad examples ;)

> That is, none of the above work any similarly as the current Evolution
> in this regard.

That is one of the big advantages of Evolution.

> I do edit quoted text myself, mostly to correct wrapping and to split
> the quoted text into parts, under which I write my comments. While I'm
> used to manually wrap the text (using Delete/Backspace and Enter keys),
> it doesn't scale for long text. Having the Format->Wrap Lines extended
> to preserve quote character appropriately on re-wrap, I'd probably get
> use to it sooner or later. I sometimes create my own quoted part just
> by adding the quote character at the beginning of the line.

As I said, one can get used to it - but it is a loss!

> I guess dropping "quote paragraph lines while typing in Plain Text
> mode" functionality would not cause any significant harm long term
> (habit factor considered), especially when its drop would simplify the
> code and other functions a lot (including undo/redo), but I thought
> I'll ask for an opinion here too.

>       Bye,
>       Milan

Bye.
Michael.
-- 
Michael Hirmke