Hi Nicolai--

On 06/06/2014 04:39 AM, Nicolai Josuttis wrote:

> I am about to make the enigmail UI more convenient/self-explaining.
> So, I have the following problem:
> I want to give three choices for encryption (and other options):
> 1) use default setting and rules
> 2) turn encryption on
> 3) turn encryption off
> 
> Unfortunately there is no 3-way-toggle button.
> But I want to give these three options in a menu.

i'm assuming you're talking about the OpenPGP menu in a single compose
window.  is that right?

At the moment, there are four options:

 Sign Message
 Encrypt Message
 --------------
 Use PGP/MIME for This Message
 Ignore Per-Recipient Rules

and they get little checkmarks when they're set.

It seems like you could apply these options just for encryption, leaving
the "Sign Message" alone, right?  Is there some sort of "default"
signing scenario that people might want to revert to?

All the options presented seem rather clunky to me, and (worse) they
present a problem for feedback -- if you're in the default state,
looking at this state should let you know whether the given message is
going to be encrypted or not.

have you thought about how to address this view in the icons in the
status bar (the pencil and the key) as well?

Unfortunately, i'm having a hard time coming up with something better.

I looked around at ideas about tri-stated checkboxes:

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Checkbox_States.svg
 http://guijournal.com/2011/05/gui-design-tri-state-checkboxes/

but they don't seem particularly useful to me.

Here are the things i'd like to come out of this decision:

 0) to see at a glance what the state of the message is

 1) to know if i'm using the defaults or not

 2) to be able to move from the default to a forced-setting other than
the current default

 3) to be able to move from the default to a forced-setting that is the
same as the current default

 4) to be able to move from one forced-setting to another

 5) to be able to move from a forced-setting back to the default

Some of these might seem more like things that humans want than others.

(3), for example, seems unlike something that a regular human would
think about.  But it is relevant in the context of "as i write this
draft, the defaults might change and i don't want to worry about that"


If there are three (or four?) categories that i want to be able to have
all these features on, it's pretty complicated!

Here are two more proposals to consider:

 A) explicit default/non-default action

What if the idea of deviating from the defaults was explicit and it
covered all the settings at once?

So the initial setup might look like:

 * Encrypt (default)
   Sign (default)
 * PGP/MIME (default)
 ------------
   Lock these choices


If the user chooses "Lock these choices" then they go to:

 * Encrypt
   Sign
 * PGP/MIME
 ------------
   Revert to defaults (Encrypted, unsigned, PGP/MIME)

Likewise, if the user chooses to alter any of the three items
individually, *all* of them move off of "defaults"

For cleanliness, the parenthetical in the "Revert to defaults" entry
could dynamically only show the diff between the defaults and the
current choices.  So, for example, using the above defaults, but if
someone clicked "Encrypt" (to disable encryption), they'd see:

   Encrypt
   Sign
 * PGP/MIME
 ------------
   Revert to defaults (Encrypt message)


 B) submenus

The OpenPGP menu would have three menu items which show the state (and
whether they're a default) textually (not with a checkmark), and each of
them have submenus.  The submenu itself would change based on the state
of the value:

 Encrypted (default) > Force Encrypted
                       Force Unencrypted
 Signed (default) > Force Signed
                    Force Unsigned
 PGP/MIME (default) > Force PGP/MIME
                      Force Inline PGP


then, if you were to select "Force Unencrypted" the tree would show:

 Unencrypted  > Use Default (Encrypted)
                Force Encrypted


If the current state had the default of Unencrypted, then it would look
like:

 Unencrypted  > Use Default (Unencrypted)
                Force Encrypted


or if they're in the default state:

 Unencrypted (default) > Force Encrypted
                         Force Unencrypted

It still seems very complex for users to deal with, for something that
is suppoesd to be more convenient/self-explaining :(


what do you think?  sorry to not have better suggestions.

        --dkg

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