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List:       kmail-devel
Subject:    Re: Operations on the parent of a closed thread
From:       Till Adam <till () adam-lilienthal ! de>
Date:       2003-03-30 14:18:48
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On Sunday 30 March 2003 15:04, Ingo Klöcker wrote:
> On Saturday 29 March 2003 10:38, Till Adam wrote:
> > Fellow friends of Italian opera,
> >
> > the attached patch
>
> Please prepend the subject of messages which contain a patch with
> "[Patch] " or "[PATCH] ".

Oops, will do.

> > changes the behavior of kmail such that when a
> > closed thread is selected (the parent, rather) and an operation such
> > as move/copy/delete is performed on it, that operation is performed
> > on all children of that parent as well. To implement that I´ve
> > changed KMHeaders::selectedMsgs() to consider children of selected
> > parents of a closed thread as selected.
> >
> > I wanted to make that an option when I started out, but now I´ve done
> > it, I really can't think of a reason why someone would want to turn
> > that off. It really is the intuitive behavior, I think. One can
> > always open a thread and operate on individual messages, if that is
> > what is desired.
>
> For experienced users it's probably the expected behavior. But I'm not
> sure about other users. During the last discussion about this we (well,
> maybe I) came up with the following ideas:
> - Whole threads or even subthreads can be selected by Ctrl+LMB on the
> [+] resp. [-] thingie.

Hm. Ok, why not. Different problem, though, I guess.

> - A closed selected thread should be marked different from a thread
> where only the top-level messages is selected (e. g. by changing the
> color of the [+]/[-] thingie). Else it won't be possible to tell the
> difference between a selected thread (which was selected by selecting
> the root of a closed thread) and a selected top-level message (which
> was selected when the thread was open but then the thread was closed).

Ok, marking it different sounds like a good additional hint.

> BTW, what does your patch do if I select the top-level message of a
> thread and then close the thread? As you patched
> KMHeaders::selectedMsgs() I guess that after closing the thread the
> complete thread will be treated as selected which is IMO wrong
> behavior.

Why is that wrong? For me a closed thread is a unit, represented by the 
parent. Actions on the parent should be executed on the unit, which means all 
messages of the thread. Collapsing a thread is making a unit out of the 
messages in it, therefor collapsing a thread with a selected parent is 
selecting that whole thread. That is consistent and intuitive, in my opinion.

> IMO selecting all messages of a closed thread has to be done when the
> top-level message is selected.

I disagree, see above.

> We should probably have a look at how other MUAs (Netscape, Mozilla,
> Evolution, Mutt, ..., and Outlook) handle this. IIRC Netscape's
> communicator had an extra column with a thread icon (which wasn't a
> such a good idea IMO).

mutt performs operations on a selected parent of a closed thread on that 
message only, as far as I can tell from the delete behavior. It provides 
delete-thread and delete-subthread individually as well, though. Same for 
evolution, I believe. Cowards, the lot of ´em. ;-)

Till Adam
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