Re: [Geary] Feature request: Browse mail by contact panel

[Stephen Michel <stephen michel tufts edu>]

On Thu, Sep 22, 2016 at 1:55 AM, geary-list-request gnome org wrote:
> Re: Feature request: Browse mail by contact panel

Completely by coincidence, I created a near-identical feature request 
last week on bugzilla[0], that integrates better with geary's current 
addressbook-free approach. I'll copy the text here for convenience, 
then respond to some specific points made below:

One fundamental paradigm difference between texting and email is that 
every email client I know of groups messages by account, then 
folder/tag, then (sometimes) thread, while every messaging app I've 
ever used groups by contact/sender.

I can send and read emails from my phone just as easily as texts.. but 
why don't I? At least in part because conversation by contact is a much 
nicer way to do initial filtering than dumping everything in an inbox.

I don't suggest that we try to turn Geary into a messaging application 
-- an email is still an atomic unit and we shouldn't try to split the 
title and the body, or show the entire contents of multiple emails in 
in a conversation view. But sorting by contact would be very useful.

I suggest adding a way to view a list of email addresses that have sent 
you mail **that is in your inbox** (of any account). It would go in the 
left pane, where the "Inboxes" menu is. One option is to add this list 
as "Inbox - Sender" and change "Inbox" to "Inbox - account" (or 
something like that); the other is to add a setting that toggles 
between inbox by account and inbox by sender. Either way, when you 
click on an name/address in that list, the second pane fills with 
messages in your inbox from that contact, replacing the sender 
name/address with the account through which you received the email.

When composing in this view, follow the following rules for pre-filling 
fields:

Send TO the sender's address (duh).

If the sender is only known to one of your accounts, send FROM that 
account.
Otherwise, if a conversation with that sender is highlight, send FROM 
that account.
Otherwise, send FROM the account from which you most recently 
corresponded with the sender.
 - There will always be a known most recent correspondence because the 
sender will only appear in this list if you have an email from them in 
one of your inboxes.

[0]: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=771849

> How would this scale with 1/many-to-many conversations? Wouldn't it 
> be more advantageous to use the "from: sender" or "to: receiver" 
> search parameters (if the already exist)?

1:many conversations appear under the sender just like normal 
conversations. They're still grouped by thread, so you'll be able to 
tell when looking at the thread that it's 1:many and not 1:1.

As soon as one of the "many" replies, it'll *also* appear under that 
person's header, with their replies expanded by default and all other 
replies collapsed.

My suggestion doesn't incorporate showing sent mail, because I'm not 
sure what the best way to do that would be. I think let's do received 
mail first, and maybe after using that for a while it'll be obvious 
where sent mail should go.

> First: Please don't talk about EDS

+1 for gnome-contacts over EDS. Even with Marvin's grievances aside, 
GNOME is definitely headed away from Evolution and EDS. The former 
sooner than the latter, but given how we've gotten by without EDS for 
so long, I'd rather avoid duplicate work of porting away from EDS in a 
couple years, wouldn't you?

> Back to topic: if such a contact panel is added, I won't be using it. 
> I use e-Mail for the more complex communication: long messages, 
> multiple contacts, larger conversations on a specific topic. I have 
> the feeling the e-Mail is built for such usage, considering that we 
> have threads, the CC-field, mailing lists.

It should be very easy to collapse any contact view so it won't get in 
your way if you don't want to use it.

@Marvin That said, I do suspect you would use it more than you think 
you would. Think how often you want to find something and think, "I 
know person X said something about Y, but I don't remember what thread 
it was in" compared to "I know someone said something about Y in thread 
Z but I don't remember who". For myself, at least, I usually remember 
who said something but not when or where.

> Not everyone I communicate with is on my contact list

My variation doesn't use an address book; just the senders in your 
inbox. I also have >5k people in geary.db.

I wonder how you planed to actually do this. I can imagine replacing 
the current account/folder panel with a contact list, but what do I see 
when I click on such a contact? Will the next pane show all threads I 
had with the contact? Only his e-Mails or also those of others that 
were part of the thread?

Conversations would still be threaded; the middle pane would look 
almost exactly how it does today; it's just a matter of which threads 
are displayed there.

> How do you want to manage automated messages from systems that use 
> email addresses "{fullname} <{username}@noreply.example.com>"? Do you 
> want me to put this mail address in my contact database? How do you 
> want to handle e-mail addresses that are "{fullname} <notifications 
> example com>"?

Since they have a unique email address, they'll get their own "contact" 
in the left pane, showing {fullname} only. In the middle pane, we'll 
handle them the same way we do currently.

~Stephen