Conversation view for TB
Sandip Dev
I tried my luck at GSoC this year and was not selected. While
chatting with Thunderbird devs on IRC, I proposed that we could have gmail
conversations type view in TB. I would like to go ahead with it. I think the
conversations view is great, it puts all relevant and related mails in one
place. And so TB should have it. Any suggestions??
I am entirely new to hacking TB. I have just read a few tutorials on
mozilla's website and thats it. But I want to do this work and I can manage
it entirely on my own. Any help would surely be appreciated.
Regards,
Sandip
Kent James
Could you describe it? How is this different from threading?
Within the TB architecture, there is one set of modules that are part of
search/filtering/virtual folders, and another that deal with threading.
I am quite familiar with the search, and not at all with the threading.
I would be happy to answer questions about the existing search.
There is a bit of a steep learning curve to getting started with TB
hacking. I've found the material in "Rapid Application Development with
Mozilla" at http://mb.eschew.org/ to be quite useful, though there are
also other resources.
Thanks for offering to help!
Kent James
Sandip Dev
In conversation view, all the mails that I have sent to a particular contact
on a particular topic get clubbed up together. For example, when I sent my
first mail to TB mailing list on "Conversation view in TB", this becomes the
start of a conversation. Henceforth, every mail that I send/receive (from TB
mailing list) on this topic will come under one conversation with the most
recent ones displayed at the top. Also,as you have sent me this email and I
reply to you by clicking on reply, it is added to the conversation. It is
really a great way to organize emails as many gmail users have already found
out.Hence I think it would be a great addition to TB.
Yes, I fully realize that hacking TB isn't going to be easy. But I am
willing to learn and put in enough hours and grey cells onto it.
Regards,
Sandip
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Kent James
> Kent:
> In conversation view, all the mails that I have sent to a particular contact
> on a particular topic get clubbed up together.
Does bug 241197 describe what you want to do?
Would it be fair to say that the primary difference between this feature
and current threaded views is that both messages sent and received
appear together in a threaded view?
Sandip Dev
Regards,
Sandip
Kent James
> Yup. Quite right. All sent and received mails together.
>
with one possible approach to the problem.
You could probably make it work now if you kept all of your sent emails
and received emails in the same folder. I haven't tested that though.
For the more general case, where sent emails are in a separate folder
than received emails, then you will need a cross folder view to see
that. We have the existing class nsMsgXFVirtualFolderDBView that is used
for cross-folder searches, but unfortunately that class does not have
threading and quicksort enabled.
So one possible objective of your task, described in the terms of the
existing mailnews capability, is to add threading to
nsMsgXFVirtualFolderDBView. There is a very similar view
nsMsgQuickSearchDBView that does do threading, so you could use that as
an example.
Guillaume Potdevin
> Yup. Quite right. All sent and received mails together.
>
> Regards,
> Sandip
>
If may drop in the discussion:
This is exactly the sort of view I am using. But to do this, I just
selected the threaded view, and asked tb to place a copy of any message
I reply to in the current folder (in the properties of the account).
I understand it is quite a few options to set up, but it may be what you
are looking for. And maybe it is enough to write an extension which
makes those settings the default one...
Guillaume Potdevin
Sandip Dev
will have to learn and explore a lot before I get into any actual coding. I
will do this.
@Guillaume: wow. I have to accept I never thought that.Yes to get this a
module would be enough. And then the whole task becomes much more simple.
Thanks.
I will start working on this from 3rd may, when my end semester exams end.I
have read quite a bit on how to write a module but never actually written
one. So this will be a good learning experience.
Thanks to all of you
Regards,
Sandip
Justin Wood (Callek)
To me part of the draw of conversation view is the way GMail also
collapses the conversation, and expands each item.
Which would mean also not using the 3-pane setup when in conversation view.
Though this approach might (likely) be harder to achieve.
--
~Justin Wood (Callek)
Mark Rousell
This is already achievable in TB as it stands. It is, in fact, how I use
TB.
Here is how I do it:
(1) I set all outgoing emails to BCC back to me.
(2) I set up Filters which recognise incoming and outgoing messages for a
particular forum, mail list, person, etc. so as to ensure that all
messages to or from that environment or person end up in the same folder.
And thus, with trivial effort, I get a threaded conversation view.
It should also be possible to replicate this effect using the 'Place
replies in the folder of the message being replied to' but when I tested
this I found that it didn't do exactly what I required of it. I forget
what the issue was now.
MarkR
Kent James
> (2) I set up Filters which recognise incoming and outgoing messages for a
> particular forum, mail list, person, etc. so as to ensure that all
> messages to or from that environment or person end up in the same folder.
>
> And thus, with trivial effort, I get a threaded conversation view.
>
Two comments.
First, I don't think most people would regard the need to setup a lot of
filters as "trivial".
Second, the available functionality requires that copies of sent
messages be put in the same folder as received messages. I hope we can
get the virtual folders working well enough so that we can provide more
separation between the concepts of *storage* of emails from *views* of
email.
Mark Rousell
> of filters as "trivial".
If one was setting up filters *just* for this then I'd probably agree but,
as far as my work practices are concerned (and as far as many other
people's work practices are concerned), it's common to have lots of
filters in order to move mail into separate folders on a per-mail list,
per-person, per-project, etc. basis. Thus, when working like this, it's
not significantly greater work to ensure that these filters (which would
have to be created anyway) handle BCC'd outgoing messages as well as
incoming messages.
Having said that, it would be nice if one could select a 'conversation'
filter rule, rather than having to deal with To/CC and From addresses with
separate filter rules.
> Second, the available functionality requires that copies of sent
> messages be put in the same folder as received messages. I hope we can
> get the virtual folders working well enough so that we can provide more
> separation between the concepts of *storage* of emails from *views* of
> email.
I agree that this is a worthy goal.
The ideal trick would be for this to be largely automated so that users
did not need to manually set up virtual folders that respected per-person,
per-project, etc. boundaries, whilst showing sent and received messages
threaded together. This is a difficult goal to achieve without very
significant improvements in (automated or rule-based) tagging.
Such improvements in tagging would be very desirable in their own right,
of course. ;-)
MarkR
Mark Rousell
> filter rule, rather than having to deal with To/CC and From addresses
> with separate filter rules.
As an aside, I'd also love to be able to enter regular expressions in
filter rules, have multi-component Boolean rule sets, and run external
programs as a filter action, but all that's for another thread.
MarkR
Sandip Dev
said, a conversation filtering rule which can be setup in one click. I will
start working on it from 5th may onwards.I would require quite a bit of
help, mainly regarding where to find/whom to ask for the necessary
information.Being a newbie to TB hacking, it will take me some time to get
the hang of things. Wish me luck.
Regards,
Sandip Dev
Emre Birol
>Being a newbie to TB hacking, it will take me some time to get
> the hang of things. Wish me luck.
>
I try to put together a reference page for newbies. It is currently in
early draft stage, but you might find useful information there
especially if you are going to do back-end programming with C/C++.
http://wiki.mozilla.org/Thunderbird:Backend_Hacking_Guide_For_Newbies
Since you are the target audience of this page, It would be great if you
can provide feedback about the areas that are not covered/not clear
enough, and the shortcomings of the page.
Also check the main Thunderbird wiki page at
http://wiki.mozilla.org/Thunderbird , it's an excellent starting point.
cheers,
Sandip Dev
Melchert Fruitema
It is just a matter of logical views, indeed. The store of messages will
have to provide the means to view the messages. I'm not convinced that
the concept of virtual folders is the basis for solving conversational
grouping, though.
The current View menu, has a number of 'Sort by' options, including
Subject. However, it is limited to operate within one message list.
Now, putting all received and "bcc" messages in the Global Inbox (only
POPs) and bingo we have what we want, right? Well, performance may be a
set back, of course, you can't win all.
--
Kind regards,
Melchert
(MacOS 10.3.9 / Firefox 2.0, Thunderbird 2.0)
Mark Rousell
Good luck with this! I hope it goes well.
MarkR
Mark Rousell
> I try to put together a reference page for newbies. It is currently in
> early draft stage, but you might find useful information there
> especially if you are going to do back-end programming with C/C++.
>
> http://wiki.mozilla.org/Thunderbird:Backend_Hacking_Guide_For_Newbies
This looks like a very promising and potentially useful document. I look
forward to reading more of it as you develop it.
MarkR
ovidiu
> Hi everyone,
>
> I tried my luck at GSoC this year and was not selected. While
> chatting with Thunderbird devs on IRC, I proposed that we could have gmail
> conversations type view in TB. I would like to go ahead with it. I think the
> conversations view is great, it puts all relevant and related mails in one
> place. And so TB should have it. Any suggestions??
>
I would point out couple of things related, I think.
1. The gmail view is probably another, more visually usefull way of
threading. See also the prefs for thread in about config: .strict
.without_re and the way TB considers threading now and if it suites you.
You may need to search bugzilla for bugs related to that ..
2. Another thread here called
TB UI enhancements: Vertical view & inline message
( or on web
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=74e1648b-11af-4075-acd5-71ed810cac09%40p25g2000hsf.googlegroups.com
)
was dealing with a message inside threadpane thing. Someone working on
that may help more ..
3. The inbox and sent are default separated, searching cross can be a
challenge.
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=379806
maybe this means a different threading solution than actual TB, or
solving that bug ..
-I wouldn't go for an easy "set some preferences for ..." solution,
cause that is only working "from now on" and does not do it for older
mail (if I'm a user that wants to move to gmail view, but have tonzz of
mails in archive)
-Also, preferences may be subject to changes and conflict with other
extensions or setups
-prefs may lead to problems for unexperienced users
4. I see this as a "view" that is "non intrusive". At the storage level,
better not to change default inbox/sent etc, otherwise being a dangerous
data loss possibility, especially thinking of unexperienced users. I
mean, mess with the view and Ui, not data.
so much for advice ..
Resources/ideas/others ..
*The gmailUi extension may have something, meaning the quick search with
expression .. ask the creator ..
*The gmail label sistem may lead to an idea related to tags .. there
where some discuss in a recent thread, not ref to gmail, but ..
*I see also an issue with imap, but that is another thing, maibe for
later implement ..
*there was an older tab implementation intention thing that may have
been closer to your idea than the actual tabs in TB3.0apre
I'll get back if remember/find anything ..
> I am entirely new to hacking TB. I have just read a few tutorials on
> mozilla's website and thats it. But I want to do this work and I can manage
> it entirely on my own. Any help would surely be appreciated.
the only help I can provide is on the html/css/UI/graphics side ( aside
invaluable advice like above .. ;-) ). Which I consider offering ...