Re: [Evolution-hackers] Why X-Mailer instead of User-Agent?
On 2018-06-14 at 12:53, Milan Crha wrote: > On Tue, 2018-05-29 at 10:10 +0200, Milan Crha wrote: >> ... thus it's probably because nobody noticed. > > Hi, > just a note, Evolution 3.30.0+ will use User-Agent instead of X-Mailer > header when sending messages: > https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/evolution/commit/dd8c825956 Cool! ___ evolution-hackers mailing list evolution-hackers@gnome.org To change your list options or unsubscribe, visit ... https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/evolution-hackers
Re: [Evolution-hackers] Thread Stealing
Le 30/05/2018 à 09h00, Milan Crha a écrit : > On Wed, 2018-05-30 at 01:43 +0200, Garreau, Alexandre wrote: >> If you inspect the In-Reply-To headers you’ll see none of these is >> marked as an answer to another, yet References mark them because some >> of them do reference the other ones. > > Hi, > I highly doubt any regular user even knows anything about the > internals. They care of the result. And what you did has the result as > shown in the attachment. > > That's a very good habit to discuss one issue in one thread (or even > bug report), though I agree it's not always possible. While you think > the things are related, then the X-Mailer has nothing to do with Reply- > to-List (it just happened that you wrote both messages), still if I'm > not interested in the X-Mailer thread then when I collapse it (or mark > it to be ignored) I lost track of the other threads. Wouldn’t it be more practical then not to nest inside other threads messages that *don’t* have an “In-Reply-To” header? > I also expect that you did put some effort to have the References > header filled in the other messages, which just shows that even you can > do that manually, regular users will not do it, unless they have tools > for it. I have a hook that looks for references to other messages (through Message-ID for instance) in the body and add them to “References”. The same way I can in my UI select several messages, then do “Reply” and this way reply to several messages, and get several Message-ID in “In-Reply-To” if I want. That stays pretty straightforward, and don’t require that much “extra” tools or commands. However I indeed never saw any user-agent correctly handling threads in that they won’t thread messages without “In-Reply-To” (sometimes they don’t even read it in any way and only use “References” to construct threads >< how random), or that have the ability to correctly represent a thread that’s not a tree but a graph (git has the ability to do that, I’d expect an user-agent to do the same, and I plan in the future to put MaGit code in my User-Agent to get that output). > Anyway, we diverged from the subject from my point of view, we just > discuss our habits and preferences, which obviously differ. Each has > its pros and cons, I'm not questioning that. Yet “it’s *your* opinion and everything can be good or bad and that doesn’t matter” is not really a constructive conclusion: I like to interpret standards not because of authority, but because they help building interoperability while preserving functionality. If there are different pro and cons we should find the simpler method to make the more easily people able to get all the pros they want and avoid all the cons they want, depending on their preferences and what’s technically possible, while preserving interoperability. > My personal past experience is that changing someone habits is pretty > hard (near to impossible), no matter what any document can suggest as > the best practice. Again, consider regular users, corporate > environments (top posting), incorrect quoting, Habits are not magically originating from the sky after having popped from nowhere, new habits can be analyzed and influenced by ergonomy, as well as old habits can be changed by a new environment (I don’t think going from GNOME 2 to GNOME 3 did preserve all “old habits” without changing anything, beside orienting people to MATE), and better: old habits *consequences* and implications can be changed by the underlying system habits build on and use. If the habit is “press the big button”, and from one precise meaning that was abuse that button begins to offer *the* simpler and most-of-time appropriated thing to do in this case, then usage become better, without changing habit. Software should adapt to habits, not the reverse, I agree. But what software do in this case should depend on interoperability and functionality, not on “preserving the old”, like an old habit would, because software isn’t habit and one change may result in non-proportional (potentially positive) outcome. > when people cannot distinguish between instant messaging and e-mail > (they try to use instant messaging habits in e-mails, huh) and so on. Beside synchronicity and presence, if quick enough with close-circuit enough I can see how mail might be used in a such way, especially as things may become quicker and software better, I don’t see this as a bad thing, only a new usage. And since currently mail is an old, interoperable and established standard, building new stuff on it, be it with adding extensions, seems to me a lot more powerful and natural than building anything on IRC bots or, how it nowadays has become sadly systematic, web browser. I still prefer exchanging one sentence per one mail per minute in a “conversation-like” view, than passing 3 hours trying to make XMPP work, waiting for my browser
Re: [Evolution-hackers] Nor “Answer to list”, nor “answer to all” make use of “Cc” …add “wide answer”?
On 2018-05-30 at 08:47, Milan Crha wrote: > On Wed, 2018-05-30 at 03:04 +0200, Garreau, Alexandre wrote: >> I didn’t understand… you receive the message then, right? > > Yes, but not from the list. Hmm… that’s why I don’t like a such configuration, a such proper handling would require to store somewhere the address of subscribed mailing-lists and try to recognize one of these in the recipients headers of each mail received. >> Though contrarily to Evolution, the later >> differentiate between “To:” and “Cc:” header (Evolution puts >> everything in “To:” > > Hmm, as far as I can tell, Evolution preserves the CC header content. I tried again: indeed, the behavior is different but it let people previously in CC in CC. However people that were in the “To” go in the “To” instead of “Cc”, contrarily to “Wide reply”… given my understanding of “Cc” (people you want to show the mail to, without addressing to them) that seems maybe better… but I’m not sure yet. >> and all the rest (that were in the “To:”, “Cc:” and “Bcc:”) in the >> “Cc:”. > > I do not agree, there is a reason why there are people in Bcc. They > should not be exposed in To or CC. Oh sorry, indeed! Bcc stay in Bcc sorry in fact. >> What’s the difference between Group Reply, Reply to all and Reply to >> list then? > > You can configure what Group Reply does, according to your > preferences/habits. That seems a bit anti-ergonomic :/ it would be better to have unambiguously named command and their UI interface well placed, possibly with their position exchanged according to your preferences/habits. >> Alternative Reply? > > Right, it's part of the development version. To be released in 3.30.0+. Oh ok, I’m still under Debian stable so I probably don’t have access to it… What does it do? >> “Complicated” doesn’t mean complete, complex or big, and “Evolution” >> may metonymically refers to its UI as well. > > There had been a criticism that the menus are too long already. I refer > just to that. Yes indeed. ___ evolution-hackers mailing list evolution-hackers@gnome.org To change your list options or unsubscribe, visit ... https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/evolution-hackers
Re: [Evolution-hackers] Nor “Answer to list”, nor “answer to all” make use of “Cc” …add “wide answer”?
On 2018-05-29 at 10:06, Milan Crha wrote: > By the way, this particular question belongs to evolution-list, rather > than to evolution-hackers. The later is for coders, while you are > discussing user functions. Not a big deal, just saying. Should we cross-post to evolution-list, then stop posting here, so that to move to a more appropriated place the current discussion, if it sounds more constructive to you than it may bother you? > is a nonsense (I'm sorry, I'd use a softer term if I knew such) Maybe it’s because I’m not fluent, used or familiar enough with english, but that term doesn’t sound “hard” or harsh in any way to me, it’s just descriptive, though quite general (or unclear). > Yours "writing privately to the list" is a nonsense […], the mailing > list is a public place, not private. I knew many private mailing lists, where you had to ask to their owners to be added (this was particularely true for companies, political parties, etc.), and sometimes a collaborator where suggested to send a proposition to that private mailing list from the outside, and then the more active people on the mailing list would reply, and cc the mailing list so less active people could see the discussion, and eventually try to participate later, while the outsiders would receive all the mail directed to them, and eventually see exchanges between several subscribed parties who found appropriated to cc them in their subsequent interpersonal exchanges. The same way, as public archives may not always be accessible or easy to find, link, use or read, and as not subscribed people may participate, it may make sense (or at least be possible) to take parts of the conversation only between lists subscribers, without involving not subscribed people. For instance let’s say some newbie, let’s say an easily worriable one or a really busy employee, that one may want not to bother with highly technical or stressfull discussion, asks some high-level question that has deep non-technical implications to a technical mailing list with a lot hackers and such, some of them may want talk about some stuff without having to explain them, without to bother the newbie, and while still allowing subscribers interested in learning to read, then first not adding the aforementioned newbie to the recipients headers, discuss, and then the idea has been deemed valuable to report to the former questioner, answer them what has been discussed while explaining not more than what has been deemed necessary to use for their problem. This is a bit complex case and may not happen that often, although I may guess it may happen with people with complex enough usage of mails or inside political parties. > I do not know what your use case or work flow is that you > notice messages where you are in To/Cc better than messages directed > only to the list where you are subscribed (I'd guess as long as they > are directed to the list too they end at the same folder), but okay. I split and sort my mail according the List-Id header. When a mail comes from a mailing list, I have a lisp function that reverse, cut (the tld), simplify (remove really redundant qualifiers such as “discuss”, “readers”, “users”, “infos”, “news” and “list”), deduplicate (uniq), add “lists”, and join with “.” so that that for instance your answer will arrive in the “lists.gnome.evolution.hacker” group and one from evolution-list will arrive in the “lists.gnome.evolution” group (that means the directory “~/mail/lists/gnome/evolution” in nnml format, also works with nnmh “MH” and nnspool ones, as aforementioned [1]). > That only proves that different people have different habits and use > cases. To be honest, I hate when people reply to all in the lists. It > breaks reply to the list, because I receive messages directed only to > the list (when I'm not in To/CC, there's a setting in mailman for it, > which avoids duplicate mails), that means that reply to all makes > things worse for someone. I didn’t understand… you receive the message then, right? and even only once (this is interesting as yesterday I did ask to mailman hackers about an optional (configurable at subscription) functionality)? > It makes sense to reply to the list, it's the place where the thread > begun, thus it should stay there, in the public. Sometimes it makes sense answering in private not to bother the list with little personnal off-topic. > As Ángel said, if you are not subscribed, then you can say so and > people will keep you in the loop. Doing it "only because you can" (like > by adding such notice into your signature regardless of actual state) > might not be ideal. Again, different people, different habits, > different preferences. Sad these are non-standard, nor have we standards to differentiate and equally adapt to and treat them :/ > People using reply-to-all, because either they > do not know reply-to-list or their mail client doesn't offer it to them > is no argument to keep using reply-to-all, just
[Evolution-hackers] Thread Stealing (Was: Re: Nor “Answer to list”, nor “answer to all” make use of “Cc” …add “wide answer”?)
On 2018-05-29 at 10:06, Milan Crha wrote: > On Tue, 2018-05-29 at 02:48 +0200, Garreau, Alexandre wrote: >> (not the same thing as a thread may change topic by having one of its >> participant changing its subject line) > > Hi > off topic: > a) I'm replying intentionally to the list Like everybody does (and is expected to do) here right (…from what I understood)? > b) I'm talking to you, the person written at the very first line > of this mail, because "Garreau, Alexandre wrote:" That contradicts my interpretation of the “To:” header line, but beside frustration and past misunderstandement… okay… > c) I do not know how much intentionally you did it, but you wrote >three different topics here, in a way that there is one thread >which covers all three topics in a very sad way. They use to >call it "thread stealing". Isn’t stealing about something that’s not yours? All three messages did references other ones because I first wrote all them in one enormous message with cross-references in it then separated in 3 messages that did link to each other through message-id as footnode. Also I didn’t find any information about “thread stealing” anywhere on the web nor in RFC nor in mailing-lists I use beside this 2002 message on debian-user (back to a time I wasn’t subscribed to it) [1] If you inspect the In-Reply-To headers you’ll see none of these is marked as an answer to another, yet References mark them because some of them do reference the other ones. I tried to follow what I did understand the first [2] and last [3] time I did read about them, In-Reply-To and References headers were distinguished in this way. It also sometimes happen, the same way, that I happen answering several messages with one messages, in which case my message have several messages in the In-Reply-To header, but I happen to use only this one for identifying how does flow a thread, while references is much to identify what might have been missed in a discussion (as it may reference how is it meant to be placed related to a sibling or even nephew of the current thread without necessarily answer to it, so that to correctly displaying orphan siblings in a single thread). [1] https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2002/11/msg00664.html [2] https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc822 [3] https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5322#section-3.6.4 ___ evolution-hackers mailing list evolution-hackers@gnome.org To change your list options or unsubscribe, visit ... https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/evolution-hackers
Re: [Evolution-hackers] Nor “Answer to list”, nor “answer to all” make use of “Cc” …add “wide answer”?
Le 29/05/2018 à 01h35, Ángel a écrit : > On 2018-05-28 at 23:21 +0200, Garreau, Alexandre wrote: >> On 2018-05-28 at 15:40, Adam Tauno Williams wrote: >> > Reply-To-List is the only option anyone should ever use, IMNSHO. Doing >> > anything else is bad netiquette. >> >> Really? When beginning first to use mailing lists I was curious about >> such a practice, but I tried to read again Netiquitte and didn’t found >> anything related [1]. > > People have different views on this. Until then I keep being put “To” of mails coming from GNU mailing lists, and am happy with this due to the semantical meaning of “To” I constructed in my mind. But how of other views? how widespread is each one? why? >> Also that means if I didn’t subscribed to this >> list (I almost didn’t, then did, since Evolution was my first mail >> user-agent, a major one, and I might be interested in its, heh, >> evolution) I would never have received an answer, > > Generally, if you write to a mailing list, you are expected to either be > subscribed (in fact, you often can't send there without subscribing > first), or politely request to be CCed in your email. Oh, what a good idea! I might even add this in a signature (then why not to be put in the To when appropriate?)? Or what about a special header to convey a such meaning so that to disambiguate the meaning of To and Cc headers? > Also, maybe you are not interested in receiving everything, but failing > everything else you should at least check the archives for replies. > > (there are also other use cases, like people reading the mailing list > through a mail2news gateway) I dislike web (archives) :/ still nntp would be a clean option. > Some mailing lists function differently, however, such as those support > emails which are actually backed by a mailing list, in which the > customer is not (and can not be) a subscriber. Thus, there it is known > that the customer only receives emails explicitly directed to him, and > Reply to all must be used. Oh, I recall sometimes having mail returned because of a such mailing list policy! Maybe then an unambiguous and formal usage may be not to add To/Cc on mailing-lists disallowing unsubscribed mail address to send mail through them? Then maybe special mailing-list headers on mail could also convey a such meaning to be more widely known by user-agents… But isn’t it complicated to keep a that complicated behavior, with headers semantics depending of context, mailing-list, people, etc. and obligating people to have more complex mail formats, understanding, usage and maybe messaging systems (mailing lists, newsgroups, etc.) rather than slightly more complicated user-agents, with a lot more simpler semantics? >> as I believe neither mailman nor sympa do have the (complicated) >> feature of keeping track of subjects, references and reply-to headers >> so that to send to unsubscribed senders to the mailing-list messages >> [which] answer or references what they sent. Especially that would >> impedes the ability to privately react and discuss about the sent may >> privately before to maybe answer back a maybe more reflected and >> collective answer. Yet I guess that too might be considered bad >> netiquette, as until then I only twice were answered on a mailing >> list without having been directly mailed: once before my mail, and >> once with this one. > > That would be a bad idea for a mailing list to do automatically. > It should actually be a user subscription option. In addition to receive > emails / don't receive / receive as a digest, you would have a "receive > only mails from threads where I have participated" option. > And yes, that would be a complicated feature to implement. I thought to such checkboxes/options, such as, for instance “mail me too altogether as other mailing-list members” or “mail me a remainder” or “don’t mail me messages with such and such topics / subjects / tags / headers / content-warning” or here, either “don’t mail me again mails that are already also addressed to me through To, Cc or Bcc” or, possibly, but a bit more complicated, “don’t mail me first-messages of each thread / each topic” (not the same thing as a thread may change topic by having one of its participant changing its subject line). But it won’t be possible to set a such setting for someone who never subscribed, hence, never were exposed to such checkboxes. And my “receive only mail from threads where I have participated” idea was “only receive mails from threads I started”, and explicitly directed towards *unsubscribed* members. Also your “receive only mails from threads where I have participated” would require from the user, if not basing on the subject line, to download (and extract from the month-wide mbox file) the given ma
Re: [Evolution-hackers] Nor “Answer to list”, nor “answer to all” make use of “Cc” …add “wide answer”?
On 2018-05-28 at 15:40, Adam Tauno Williams wrote: >> “reply in private to the list, outside of the knowledge of eventual >> participants). The problem here is “reply to the list” is not the >> canonical standard thing most people will want to do, it is just the >> complementary opposite of “reply privately to the sender”: “reply >> privately to the list”. > > Reply-To-List is the only option anyone should ever use, IMNSHO. Doing > anything else is bad netiquette. Really? When beginning first to use mailing lists I was curious about such a practice, but I tried to read again Netiquitte and didn’t found anything related [1]. Also that means if I didn’t subscribed to this list (I almost didn’t, then did, since Evolution was my first mail user-agent, a major one, and I might be interested in its, heh, evolution) I would never have received an answer, as I believe neither mailman nor sympa do have the (complicated) feature of keeping track of subjects, references and reply-to headers so that to send to unsubscribed senders to the mailing-list messages that answer or references what they sent. Especially that would impedes the ability to privately react and discuss about the sent may privately before to maybe answer back a maybe more reflected and collective answer. Yet I guess that too might be considered bad netiquette, as until then I only twice were answered on a mailing list without having been directly mailed: once before my mail, and once with this one. On all other mailing lists (mainly: GNU, my (associative) ISPs, as well as administrative or political mailing lists) I’ve *always* be directed (intentionnally or not) with “To” or “Cc” the mail. And several times (especially for non-technical ones, where participant didn’t always knew or were used to what was a mailing list) that helped keep some (sometimes important to the discussion) people in the discussion. > I always reply to list and drop all other recipients; I assume they > are detritus accumulated from misconfigured mail clients. For me when “to” contain anything, that doesn’t only mean I want to send the message there (that, in fact, would be detritus if the person is knowledgably subscribed to the mailing list) but that also means the message is *directed” to that person in the meaning that if I say “you” there, that means anybody in the “To:” header, contrasted with anybody in the “Cc:” header or to which I may show or afterward re-send the mail (be it by some other protocol than SMTP). For instance, as I see you didn’t (and asked for) not add(ing) the user personal address in “to”, I consider I can’t personally address people in this mail, except to the whole mailing list, then each time I say “you” in this mail that’s either impersonal pronoun, either directed to the general audience of the mailing list. My mail client (emacs) has several options to answer to messages, and I usually do this because I asked to people (on mailing lists) and they said me to do so so unsubscribed people can see the message, and I also found that added value of semantically signifying who your message is intended for. >> I think there should be a “reply to list and sender” (or differently >> named) feature that does answer to the list while staying addressed >> at the sender, as does my current user-agent with “wide reply”. > > This is not so simple to implement reliably as you might think; > determining which addresses are which, not across all mail list > software, hosting, etc... Simply: you put the original sender in the “to” header, and anything else, including the address in “list-post” (except if it’s already in “to” or “cc”) in “cc”, by default, and then possibly let the user alter this if they desire so. > Anyway Reply-To-List solves the problem. No because that loose semantical information, means something else, can do something else (discuss in private on the list) and exclude unsubscribed participant. > Some user's use of mail-filters is not a problem for other list > subscribers to solve. That might be a solution to *remove* mail, not to add/receive, so my proposition still is useful. [1] https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1855#section-3.1.2 ___ evolution-hackers mailing list evolution-hackers@gnome.org To change your list options or unsubscribe, visit ... https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/evolution-hackers
[Evolution-hackers] Why X-Mailer instead of User-Agent?
Hi, Recently I received a mail from Evolution, and as I recalled it a bit (it was my first ever free-software mail user-agent! ^^ which I always recommanded at the time I still used GNOME), I subsequently retried it to inspect its behavior. In both occurence I noted the usage of, non-standard as far as I understood, “X-Mailer” header rather than the, standard as far as I understood, “User-Agent” one [1]. Why so? Is there a reason, or did just this stayed this way since 2009 (just learned first version was back in 2000, what a respectable ancestor! :D)? [1] https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5536#section-3.2.13 ___ evolution-hackers mailing list evolution-hackers@gnome.org To change your list options or unsubscribe, visit ... https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/evolution-hackers
[Evolution-hackers] Nor “Answer to list”, nor “answer to all” make use of “Cc” …add “wide answer”?
Hi, Recently I missed a mail, for only some days fortunately, but knowing myself I might have missed a lot more this way: this mail was an answer on a mailing list, to a mail I sent there, and it didn’t include me in either the “To:” nor the “Cc:” header, thought the user (whose user-agent^Wx-mailer [1] header teached me they used Evolution) refered to me using “you” and “your” in their mail body. The mail only included the mailing-list address in the “To” header. I’m subscribed to a lot of mailing-lists and they get sorted in a lot of folders I rarely inspect. Through experience, I ended considering Primary Recipients (those in “To”) of a mail are those whom you refer using “you” and “your”, while the auxiliary ones (those in “Cc”) are whom you don’t, while still desire aknowledging the message. In this situation, I’d have expected to receive a mail with me in the “To” header, and the mailing-list address in the “Cc” (and eventual previously present-here addresses), as my current user-agent do with the command “wide reply” (by opposition with the simple reply which just do the same as your “reply in private” functionality). However, checking in Evolution, there is no command to do a such thing. Either there is “reply to all”, whose utility may still be to address everybody in the discussion, or “reply to list”, which may be useful to “reply in private to the list, outside of the knowledge of eventual participants). The problem here is “reply to the list” is not the canonical standard thing most people will want to do, it is just the complementary opposite of “reply privately to the sender”: “reply privately to the list”. I think there should be a “reply to list and sender” (or differently named) feature that does answer to the list while staying addressed at the sender, as does my current user-agent with “wide reply”. I’m aware GNOME project particularely cares about ergonomy, usability/accessibility and simplicity. Then, without necessarily adding one or two actions, it may be the default (with tool-bar butter, highest in context menu) action. But that default behavior should be important for users who are not used to mailing-lists usages. In fact, sometimes, you want to write to a mailing-list without being interested in all the threads, so you don’t subscribe, and it is then important to add sender address in the “To” header. Fearing that people or User-Agent don’t automatically, for instance, I usually subscribe to all mailing-lists I write to (I might become interested in their content anyway), but I end with a lot of mail not ever reviewed then (I need a RDBM and filtering/mixing/priorization heuristics in my user-agent I believe). Thank you, and sorry for verbosity, it is because I believe there is much to say to the least required, which usually is the most important, and this matters to me. [1] Why X-Mailer instead of User-Agent? < ___ evolution-hackers mailing list evolution-hackers@gnome.org To change your list options or unsubscribe, visit ... https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/evolution-hackers
[Evolution-hackers] MH backend for storing mail
Hi, I justed wanted to say that I was astonished by Evolution working out of the box with all the mails I stored using Gnus Emacs “nnml” backend, which, as far as I remember, is like “nnmh” (or also “nnspool”, say the documentation) backend, except it has “.overview” files to index files and become quicker, based on something coming from news servers. Running Evolution for the first time, and trying “MH” to see if it worked out of the box (it did) I learned it had some indexation file “.folder” facilities coming from “exmh” (appearing to be a Tcl/Tk GUI of nmh), which I ignore the working, but may have something in common with “.overview” in its working. Thus, beside congratulating you for a such cool software (as I previously said in another mail [1], Evolution was my first free-software user-agent ^^ and it performed fantastic, though it was of a little bit complicated appearance), I’d like to know where did you find a good enough specification of “exmh .folder” format (except evidently exmh’s source code itself), so I could maybe link it to Gnus developers so they may be interested in reading, importing or exporting it, since something as big and old as Evolution uses it. Also I’d like to know if, knowing it’s based on even older and more standard usenet stuff, for you might be interested in this “.overview” thing gnus currently use [2] to index files instead of or in addition to “.folders”, or maybe import/export it. [1] Why X-Mailer instead of User-Agent? [2] http://www.gnus.org/manual/gnus_84.html#Choosing-a-Mail-Back-End ___ evolution-hackers mailing list evolution-hackers@gnome.org To change your list options or unsubscribe, visit ... https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/evolution-hackers
