From kmail-devel Sat Nov 29 02:13:32 2003 From: Dirk Mueller Date: Sat, 29 Nov 2003 02:13:32 +0000 To: kmail-devel Subject: Re: Ideas on Reply-To-List X-MARC-Message: https://marc.info/?l=kmail-devel&m=107007203305346 On Friday 28 November 2003 21:12, brad wrote: > Unless users are used to 'r' replying to a list, like with previous > versions of kmail. There is not "a" list. Many mailinglists do not set a Reply-To header, for very good reasons btw. So the behavior of 'r' was inconsistent: sometimes it replied to the sender, and sometimes to the mailing list. I think from the pure privacy point of view alone the default, easy to catch action must not go to the list, since people might post private messages to the mailing list then accidentally. I see that happen almost on a weekly basis. You don't see that on the KDE, Linux or other techie lists, but on those which are used by the "average" people. The current handling in KMail has a big advantage: it works the way you expect it. Its not the way you're used to it maybe, but it works reliably the way you would expect it to work, if you know nothing about the lower details: a) A Reply-To-Sender ('r') always replies to the sender. no matter how the list admin or whatever tried to break the mail, it will always go to the sender. b) A Reply-To-All ('a') will always reply to all interested parties, no matter how hard the list tried to screw it up. c) A Reply-To-List ('l') will always reply to the list, no matter if there was a reply-To or a list-id or there wasn't. if its not a list, it will behave like reply-to-sender. So, in fact it replaced a very inconsistent handling (which was depending on the mailing list settings) with a very consistent handling: depending on which action you choose, it will do the thing you want. always. Thats a major improvement. Now, there are in fact a few GUI issues: a) the RMB on the message shows "Reply" and "reply to all", but it does not show "Reply to list". b) the default toolbar has no "reply to list" button. c) people who are used to broken 2-reply-mode clients, will not be able to use KMail the same way - they have to use the 3rd, reply-to-list action. Perhaps they're not able to find it. Perhaps they don't want to use a 3rd action. d) The "reply" action should actually be called "reply to sender". It seems to me that people complain about c) most, but only because there is b) or d) triggering their confusion. Perhaps they will be happy when b) or d) is fixed, perhaps not, I don't know. One option would it be to make 'r' invoke Reply-To-List, and maybe a different shortcut (perhaps 'R') to start the reply-to-sender. Another option would be to remove the keyboard shortcut of "reply-to-list" and put it on "r" instead. Personally, I would not be happy about this change since I'm already intelligent enough to choose the right one of the three options I have of how to reply to a mail (actually I think about it before I even start to consider a reply ... "will I mail this to the guy in private? or should I send it to the list? is the person subscribed at all, or do I have to CC the person?"). Thats the very initial decision, right after the "is it worth replying at all?" barrier was surpassed. It influences the language I type in, the way I write and the amount of information I give in the mail. I would be utterly annoyed by an email client that would try to be "smart" and do some magic "what did the user intended?" guessing. The mailer can't guess reliably. The only way is to make the user choose. However, it might make sense to change the defaults, so that those people who are used to broken 2-mode clients feel more comfortable. maybe it should be a wizard thingie ("can you count till three?").. I doubt that it is worth the hassle though. I think many unexperienced users do not like to reply to a mailing list - in fact they're most of the time afraid that a mail will accidentally end up on the mailing list. I think it is correct that the mail user agent tries to reduce the damage by default. I find it remarkable though that all people that complained about the change of behavior are using the "move the mouse to the toolbar and press the button" way of starting a reply. Since I use almost exclusively the keyboard in kmail I think it seems to be an acceptable mid-way to just exchange the button in the toolbar, or make it more intelligent (like asking explicitely which action is wanted, together with a "don't ask me again" checkbox). I would have expected that those people used to the keyboard would complain more - since they now have to press 'l' instead of 'r' to get (almost) the same behavior. But I didn't notice that - at least nobody complained to me. See, when I started to use KMail I was very annoyed that the default action sent a mail to the mailinglist - it was actually impossible to find an action that would send in private (and I never thought of right-clicking the email address and then select 'reply'). Instead KMail had this 'Reply-To-List' action which pretty much every time did basically the same thing like the 'Reply' action. So in the past it was a good idea to hide this rather useless option. But now that it works it should be propagated more. _______________________________________________ KMail Developers mailing list kmail@kde.org https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kmail