That is indeed the spirit of what I'm thinking. I think what might be
better is for 2 participants, you don't even need name and avatar: the
header at the top says "Conversation with Jim", and then it would just
be the messages and that's *it*. So it looks like
http://mobiforge.com/files/iphone-sms-1.jpg. No dates and times, no
name, no avatar; just a message thread, to be read. (This to me seems
compelling enough to me that maybe it should be limited to only
2-participant conversations, but I'm not sure.) (Also, for extra credit,
include images inline a la the SMS stuff, if they're attached.)
I think your point (2) is correct; certainly it should only work if
there's only one "reply block".
Conversations which were in SMS mode and then suddenly get a long reply,
or a reply with more than one inline response, would need to switch back
into old-fashioned conversation mode, indeed, which sounds a bit
discombobulating but there it is. You'd want a button somewhere to
switch back into old-fashioned conversation mode anyway, in case you
actually care about headers or signatures or date and time or whatever.
I would suggest that SMS mode isn't something that you have to toggle
on, though, otherwise no-one will discover it; it's just how
conversation mode works if the thread meets the heuristics.
The one-paragraph three-paragraph question is probably best answered by
just creating a bunch of mockups with one-paragraph and three-paragraph
and five-paragraph replies in this "SMS mode" and looking at them to see
whether they look stupid or not :)
sil
On 06/08/12 09:17, Jim Nelson wrote:
Hi Stuart,
This is definitely something we've talked about in the past. In
particular, Daniel Fore of Elementary fame has shown a great deal of
interest in making Geary look more like a chat or SMS client than a
traditional email client. What I don't think we've talked about in
the past are the heuristics you're presenting here. I'm curious, if a
conversation is in SMS mode (just to give it a name) and then one of
the participants sends a long email, would you imagine it then
switches to conversation mode (to give it another name)?
To further lay out your idea, here's my proposal for SMS mode:
1. Fewer than 'n' participants (2, 3, 4)
2. All replies are prepended to quoted text (if any text is quoted at
all), i.e. no inline replies. (Could allow replies appended to quoted
text too, but that seems increasingly uncommon these days).
3. Replies are less than a certain length (I'm willing to go beyond
one paragraph, maybe three, and not including the signature).
SMS mode could then not display headers, but it could also completely
remove quoted text and signatures, showing only a name, date/time,
avatar, and the reply.
Is this in the spirit of what you're thinking? I'm trying to think of
any other requirements/heuristics that might be needed or useful here.
I should also point you to this ticket, which is to compress collapses
messages in a conversation into a single blob that the user can expand
at will:
http://redmine.yorba.org/issues/5137
Not exactly what you're specifying here, but also with the intent of
simplifying the display of a long conversation.
-- Jim
On Sun, Aug 5, 2012 at 12:56 PM, Stuart Langridge <[email protected]>
wrote:
I had this idea. Something that would be dreadfully cool in a mail
client is this: if a mail conversation is primarily composed of
replies which are only a paragraph or less long, and it's between two
people (perhaps three), then collapse the conversation completely and
show it like an SMS conversation. Totally hide all the headers,
subjects, everything. This would make half of my email conversations
so, so, so much easier to read. It feels like the sort of thing that
geary could do, and it'd be a winning new thing that other clients
don't have.
Thoughts?
sil
--
New Year's Day --
everything is in blossom!
I feel about average.
-- Kobayashi Issa
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