[haiku-development] Re: Working on Haiku's Mail app

Hallo Joachim,

Humdinger wrote:
Not if you consider tagging. You can set the status to e.g. "4later", "blog", "TYA", "HUG" if you want to keep track of mails to revisit later, could be a news item for your blog, a commit for a Thank You Award candidate, or changes concerning the Haiku User Guide. Add to that the query for "Same Status" and seeing and setting the status of the current mail becomes interesting.
Ah, I see. I did not even know email status could be used that way. This is definitely useful (such as the examples that Axel gave). However, this is something that could well belong to the existing "button bar".
For some reason, you have hidden the button bar in all your screenshots, but this is in fact on by default, and I would rather keep it that way, because it is very convenient to browse through messages, reply and/or forward emails, etc. It could definitely use a facelift, but I would not want to see it go. :)
As I said, it's not solely to cramp as much info as possible in the tiniest space. We already need the horizontal space for the status name and the vertical for the header info. It can get even a bit wider when accommodating longer status names. Plus, I consider using a drop-down menu for the status to make the "Set to..." functionality more obvious. This would increase the width even a bit more... Moving the whole status thing to the right, will put it away from the header-data focus and IMO doesn't look too good besides the encoding menu. Since different status don't have different icons (as I somehow misremembered when thinking about New/Read), another idea I have is to use an avatar assigned to the From-field's Person file, if available, else the To-field's (if it differs from your account -> mailing lists), and only then fall back to the standard mail icon. 
I like the idea to put a face to a mail.
I don't know... I think the whole idea of using big icons to show email status and/or avatars for the from/to fields is simply going overboard. I mean, Haiku is about minimalism, not eye candy...
The attachment bar would also be hidded if there are none. Most of the time, a single line bar suffices. Extending an attachment bar vertically and only reducing the message area by a few lines is less problematic than resizing header information horizontally when displaying a list-view beside it.
Allow me to take issue with that assessment: with computer screens going wider even in smaller devices, vertical space is more precious than horizontal space.
All messages from any given individual on any given subject: I do this very frequently. :)
You could still search "Same Subject" and with one click sort by "Sender" in the result window. 

I know it is doable, but it is not easier or more efficient. :)
I contrast, I never felt the need for time-constrained queries, but I can see how it could be useful.
It is. Imagine you remember a mail Axel wrote recently. Searching just for "Same Sender" will thrash your hd while waiting for the 3000 mails of the past 7 years to sort themselves into the result window. Limiting to the past 2 weeks or whatever does help... :)
Let me say something as someone who is frequently in the frontline of selling Haiku to non-BeOS/Haiku users face to face: this is the wrong reason to adopt a new feature. "Live queries" is and has been one of Haiku's major selling points; so instead of putting workarounds on applications or the interface to try to make up for current shortcomings live queries, the focus should be on fixing those shortcomings (in BFS, Tracker or wherever the problem may be) so that the queries are really "live" instead. 


Would be nice to have both. :)
IMO, one attribute + time-frame is the most flexible solution and anything more would take away the advantage of simplicity.
Attribute + time-frame is more useful than nothing, but I don't see it being the the most flexible; the most flexible -- and powerful -- would be to allow using all the email attributes exposed in the client. Would this be more complex? I highly doubt it; if you added a few checkboxes to the expandable Query area, that would be quite intuitively in fact, and a lot less complex than running queries from Tracker.
Anyway, keep up the good work! And don't worry, I will not follow you to the haiku-cdt list. :) 

Cheers!

Jorge/aka Koki

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