[haiku-cdt] Mail: GUI and Queries (was: [haiku-development] Re: Working on Haiku's Mail app)
- From: "Humdinger" <humdingerb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: haiku-cdt@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 04 Dec 2009 11:24:52 +0100
Hello!
All your guys' feedback got me thinking and re-evaluating the approach
I took regarding the query stuff. I'd like to continue the discussion
on the CDT mailing list, as I feel ashamed to be abusing this dev-
mailing list any longer.
*Please, if you're still interested, follow up on the CDT list, not the
dev list.*
[The original thread on the dev list:
//www.freelists.org/post/haiku-development/Working-on-Haikus-Mail-app]
What do you think of keeping a more traditional Haiku approach and
losing the expandable query panel altogether? No need for a fancy new
GUI widget, it saves space and complexity and would enable keyboard
shortcuts.
Instead of its own view, we'll have the usual Queries menu (ticket
#1208) and use an additional Queries toolbar button (which is not
strictly necessary, but users relying on the toolbar would also want to
access queries from there, I imagine).
Another option is to also provide a context menu on header information,
so a right-click on e.g. the sender would show the below discussed menu
item (here: "Same Sender... >") in addition to other options, like
"Copy to Clipboard", "Add New People File" (if it doesn't already
exist) etc.
Attention, ASCII art is coming up!
The queries menu:
____________
|_Queries___|_____________
| |
| Same Subject... > |
| Same Sender... > |
| Same Mailing List... > |
| Same Status... > |
|------------------------|
| All in Timeframe > |
|------------------------|
| { User Query 1 }... > |
| { User Query 2 }... > |
| { User Query 3 }... > |
| { User Query 4 }... > |
|------------------------|
| Edit User Queries... |
|________________________|
What exact queries will be provided remains to be discussed. "Same
Mailing List" appears only if the To:-field and your Account:-field
don't match, a sign of a mailing list. The menu also changes when
writing a new mail: here "Same Sender" is replaced with "Same Receiver"
etc.
Besides the default queries, you can add user queries which are any
query you put in "~/config/settings/Mail/User Queries". Only the empty
attribute fields of those queries are replaced with the corresponding
values of the current mail. Filled in values will remain untouched.
That way more complex queries can be used, like "Same Subject && Same
Sender" or "Same Sender !& Subject=="*[haiku-commits]*"".
Every menu item has a submenu to optionally limit the query to a
certain timeframe.
You don't have to enter the submenu, if you just click on "Same
Subject..." the query starts immediately showing all mail of that
subject without timeframe limit. ("All in Timeframe" being the
exception for the obvious reason...). This is similar to the "Open...
>" menu in other apps, that provide a submenu with recent documents,
> but show the open file dialog when just clicking the menu item.
The timeframe submenu:
____________
|_Queries___|_____________
| ___|_______________
| Same Subject... |_____Timeframe_____|
| Same Sender... | |
| Same Mailing List..| Since 4 hours > |
| Same Status... | Today > |
|--------------------| Since 3 days > |
| All in Timeframe | Since 2 weeks > |
|--------------------| Since 6 months > |
| { User Query 1 }...|___________________|
| { User Query 2 }... > |
| { User Query 3 }... > |
| { User Query 4 }... > |
|------------------------|
| Edit User Queries... |
|________________________|
The timefame submenu of every menu item only provides Today and the
units hours/days/weeks/months. The value is set in the next deeper
submenu. These values are remembered for each menu item.
I expect a user to mostly reuse the once set value as it's only meant
to roughly limit the timeframe of his query results.
The value submenu:
____________
|_Queries___|_____________
| ___|_______________
| Same Subject... |_____Timeframe_____|
| Same Sender... | |
| Same Mailing List..| Since 4 hours >_|_
| Same Status... | Today | 1 |
|--------------------| Since 3 days | 2 |
| All in Timeframe | Since 2 weeks | 3 |
|--------------------| Since 6 months | 4 |
| { User Query 1 }...|________________| 5 |
| { User Query 2 }... > | |_6_|
| { User Query 3 }... > |
| { User Query 4 }... > |
|------------------------|
| Edit User Queries... |
|________________________|
Depending on the unit, more or fewer values should be provided.
Maybe:
hours: 1,2,3,4,5,6,9,12 (then you can switch to today)
days: 1,2,3,4,5,6 (then you can switch to week)
weeks: 1,2,3 (then you can switch to month)
months: 1,2,3,6,12 (then you'll skip the timeframe altogether)
If the general idea is accepted, I'll once more update the GUI part of
my proposal page at http://docs.google.com/View?id=ddx3qxp9_13ftxvhjgj.
Regards,
Humdinger
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