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

[Marvin W <gnome larma de>]

Hi,

On Di, Sep 27, 2016 at 4:13 , Stephen Michel <stephen michel tufts edu> 
wrote:
> 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 have both instant messenger and email client on my phone and I agree 
that I tend to use the instant messenger a lot more than email when 
writing on my phone. The main reason for me to do so is that in an 
instant messenger I do not have complex things to explain or write 
large messages in general. I don't like writing large messages on my 
phone, but I also don't like to write them in an instant messenger.

I wonder: if you noticed you like using your instant messenger on your 
phone, why don't use it on your desktop as well? Most modern messengers 
have desktop clients that look and feel like the mobile pendants. You 
don't need to make Geary your instant messenger for this.

Take for example the email you just posted to this mailing list. Would 
you even think of writing such a long message in an instant messenger? 
What would you think if someone posted this in one of your 
WhatsApp/Telegram/* groups? Instant messaging and e-mails are separate 
communication means and should not be confused with each other. That's 
the same as the difference between letter and phone calls. While phone 
calls would be cheaper for the majority of users, they still tend to 
use letters for certain communication and I bet you would be somewhat 
surprised if someone would call you to read a letter and after being 
finished just hangs up.

> 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.

We basically have these rules applied in the normal "reply" button on 
e-mails already (except we honor reply-to header that you apparently 
want to ignore?), except they must all be in the same account
Also note that your description ignores having multiple addresses in 
the same account. And it is not always possible to find the mail 
address from an account that should be used to send, if the e-mail has 
something unknown in the to-field (which can still be delivered to you, 
consider bcc).

> 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.

1. This means that if you have a conversation with, say 20 people, all 
these 20 people will be on top of you contact panel and you would be 
required to scroll down for other people? That would be a lot worse 
than typical instant messengers that show groups as groups.

2. This also means that an e-mail full of addresses in the from-field 
(rfc 822 allows multiple addresses in the from-field) will cause the 
contact panel to be cluttered as well? Or how would you handle such an 
e-mail originated from three persons?

> @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.

I doubt that. I use an instant messenger for short contact based 
communication and I am able to use Geary's awesome search feature that 
already allows to easily filter mails by a certain person that contains 
a certain word - exactly what you described.

> > 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.

GitHub is an example service that does use these fancy e-mail 
addresses. I have a thread of >100 messages in my inbox with messages 
from >20 participants. Just tell me how this is displayed in your 
example? For me it's currently one thread in my GitHub folder.

Again, your concept seems not very solid for mailing lists. Consider 
you are being on a larger development list like for the linux kernel. 
You would receive multiple messages daily from persons you don't care 
personally (because for you they're just contributors, not persons you 
would want to contact directly). Currently such mailing lists only 
work, because you can put them automatically in a certain sub directory 
on your IMAP server and have them sorted by thread there. If you would 
go with a contact panel, you should not be displaying this folder by 
contact, but keep the folder as a whole, or it will be a terrible user 
experience.

tl;dr: I'll stay with my previous statement that I won't be using such 
a feature (and certainly also won't help developing it), but that 
doesn't mean that it can't be added as an optional feature...

Cheers,
Marvin