Re: [Evolution] Full history in reply

[Pete Biggs <pete biggs org uk>]

On Thu, 2020-06-11 at 09:25 +1000, Ian wrote:
> By convention I would expect that all of the messages are included in
> the reply. Most mail clients do this, why not evolution
>
> Which mail clients behave in the manner that you describe.

I really think you have got terminology mixed up here.

When you reply in evolution it will include the message you are
replying to - either quoted as I have done here, or inline as you have
done (aka "Outlook style") depending on your preferences.  I would
normally remove the irrelevant parts of the message I'm replying to,
but I've left them in here to illustrate the point.

That message you are replying to may, or may not, have, as part of the
text, a copy of the messages that each person replied to that *they*
have included.  It is still *ONE* message (but with lots of other bits
of text included) - as more and more people reply, each message gets
bigger and bigger.  

What no client ever does is to include all the other mail messages in a
thread.  That would mean in this thread it would join together six
messages even though they are not part of the message I'm replying to -
I have threads of hundreds of messages and I really don't want all
those messages being added every time I reply to the thread.

You see some of us are of the opinion that there is no need to include
the whole of an email underneath what your reply.  The sensible thing
is to intersperse your replies in the relevant parts of the email you
are quoting (note "quoting", not "including") so that there is a
conversation - you can have multiple levels of quoting so it is clear
which message/person you are replying to; and you trim the message so
that you don't include irrelevant parts.  There is no need for every
single message to have all the quoted/included messages because you
already have all the messages in your Inbox and they should be properly
threaded so that you can find the email history without scrolling
through thousands of lines of included text.

Some of us are also of the opinion that replying above a message is not
a logical thing to do - you put replies underneath questions, not above
and it's helpful to trim messages so you only include relevant bits. If
you just reply above the message you have to do linguistic gymnastics
to try and describe what you are talking about: "in paragraph 3 of the
third message below X said in reply to the 5th message from Y".  Just
quote the necessary bits, it's easier.

BTW, this including the whole email and just replying above it is
called "Top Posting".  It is frowned-on on many technical mailing lists
like this, as is posting in HTML.  Please don't do it.

P.


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Andre Klapper <ak-47 gmx net>
> To: evolution-list gnome org <evolution-list gnome org>
> Subject: Re: [Evolution] Full history in reply
> Date: Wed, 10 Jun 2020 08:57:36 +0200
>
> On Wed, 2020-06-10 at 06:41 +0000, jiri.one via evolution-list wrote:
>
> when I reply to email, in the text of email history is just last
> email from sender, but not the whole thread / full history of our
> conversation. Is it possible to set this somewhere or I will need to
> make feature request?
>
> When replying to a single message, why would you expect other messages
> from that thread to be included? It's up to both you and the recipients
> which parts of previous older messages are quoted in a newer message.
> If you need to forward older messages in a thread, use "Forward".
>
> For rendering all messages in a thread one after another (without any
> "replying") see https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/evolution/-/issues/401
>
> Cheers,
> andre
> --
> Andre Klapper  |  ak-47 gmx net
> https://blogs.gnome.org/aklapper/
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> evolution-list mailing list
> evolution-list gnome org
> To change your list options or unsubscribe, visit ...
> https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/evolution-list
>
> _______________________________________________
> evolution-list mailing list
> evolution-list gnome org
> To change your list options or unsubscribe, visit ...
> https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/evolution-list