42085 - Implement the full Edit Menu in the address book

Status: NEW

(MailNews Core :: Address Book, defect, P3)

Description

[Ninoschka Baca]

Build 2000-06-08-09M17: Win95
Build 2000-06-08-11M17: Linux 6.0, Mac 9.04

Overview: The Address Book's Edit menu should:

I. With an Address Book selected

1. Disable
a. 'Select All' when an Address Book is selected. 
If this was enabled then the only thing you could do is to Delete. Deleting 
multiple Address Books at one time seems dangerous to me. 4.x has 'Select All' 
disabled when an Address Book has focus. 

2. Change
a. 'Edit Card' to 'Edit Address Book' when an Address Book in the left pane has 
focus.

II. With a card selected
1. Enable
a. Undo (depends on bug#5648)
b. Redo (depends on bug# 5648)
c. Cut  (which would perform a Delete)
d. Copy (jglick: should this be enabled. If so then how would it work exactly?)
e. Paste (if 'Copy' is performed then Paste should be enabled)

Comment 1

[jglick]

>d. Copy (jglick: should this be enabled. If so then how would it work exactly?)
>e. Paste (if 'Copy' is performed then Paste should be enabled)

It would copy the entire card.  And then the user could paste the entire card 
into a different AB (or existing AB).  When the card is pasted, the "New Card" 
dialog opens with the appropriate info.  If the entry is a duplicate, when the 
user clicks "OK" they get the "An entry already exists for... Replace?" dialog.

Comment 2

[scottputterman]

removing nsbeta3 since this will be nominated as part of an ab ui meta bug.  
Moving to M18.

Comment 3

[timeless]

I'll look into 1 and 2

Comment 4

[timeless]

Stealing from putterman.

Comment 5

[timeless]

accepting.

Comment 6

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

Bugs targeted at mozilla1.0 without the mozilla1.0 keyword moved to mozilla1.0.1 
(you can query for this string to delete spam or retrieve the list of bugs I've 
moved)

Comment 7

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

Moving to core, the point here is we want the full edit menu working correctly. So changing title etc.

Comment 8

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

We should definitely try to get to this for TB 3.

Comment 10

[David :Bienvenu]

I guess we still want this, but I'm not putting it in a milestone. Mark, feel free to correct me on this...

Comment 11

[David :Bienvenu]

taking off wanted, in favor of  Bug 339227 and bug 94407 per Standard8

Comment 13

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

Wayne Cc'ed me here, probably hoping for me to dissect this - my pleasure! :-)

• Do you agree on my TODOs below?
• This bug and dependents are all in Mailnews Core, which reduces their visibility significantly. Makes no sense as most/all the duplicates are Thunderbird, SeaMonkey won't have the resources to implement this before Thunderbird, and the code of address book is no longer shared.
  Can I move this bug 42085, bug 339227, and bug 94407 to Thunderbird?
• Do you think there's benefit in keeping this bug? (I'm undecided, but I like the focus on a single main menu, could keep this as a meta bug).

(In reply to Ninoschka Baca from comment #0)

Overview: The Address Book's Edit menu should:

I. With an Address Book selected

1. Disable
   a. 'Select All' when an Address Book is selected.

Haha, yes, still valid. Try it on 102 or Daily, it'll select all text of the entire AB window as if it was a web page, which is totally useless.
With a card selected, would be nice to select all cards.
TODO: Probably worth filing a bug.

2. Change
   a. 'Edit Card' to 'Edit Address Book' when an Address Book in the left pane has focus.

In TB 91, we had the following equivalents:
Contact selected: Edit > Contact Properties
Mailing list selected: Edit > Mailing List Properties
AB selected: Edit > Address Book Properties

In 102, we didn't port any of the old AB window's main menus to the unified main menus for the new AB in a tab.
Apparently we do have a cmd_properties (I guess) in the main Edit menu, but it doesn't update when you switch to AB:

• In main 3-pane, select a folder, then open Edit menu and see Folder Properties.
• Switch to AB tab, select an AB or a contact, then open Edit menu: still showing (disabled) Folder Properties - not really useful.
  Worse, in addition there's Edit > Calendar Properties which is often shown and enabled regardless of which tab you're on, and it even works to open a random calendar on any tab except 3-pane:
• Switch to calendar tab and select a random calendar on the left.
• Switch directly to AB tab without going via 3-pane.
• Open Edit menu and see Calendar Properties enabled and working for AB tab - useless UI!

We have meta-ish bug 1771605 and bug 1771604 helpfully filed by Wayne.
Not sure if we'll get round to fixing those in bulk or if we need smaller satellite bugs.
Bulk may have advantage of unified approach, whereas smaller satellites perhaps has higher/faster chances of getting any improvements actually done.

TODO:

• Probably the cmd_properties issue as well as the Calendar Properties would each deserve their own bug.
• Reflect on bulk vs. satellites and way forward to get traction on restoring/fixing main menu access.

II. With a card selected

1. Enable
   a. Undo (depends on bug#5648)
   b. Redo (depends on bug# 5648)

Undo/Redo for cards is Bug 94407.
Bug 5648 is "Access denied", don't know what that was.

c. Cut (which would perform a Delete)
d. Copy (jglick: should this be enabled. If so then how would it work
exactly?)
e. Paste (if 'Copy' is performed then Paste should be enabled)

Of course. Having Cut/Copy/Paste including their associated shortcuts Ctrl+X/C/V would be extremely useful for managing cards between address books or just copying an entire card to Clipboard for pasting somewhere else in some useful format flavors like VCard etc. Not sure if we'll see this before retirement.

Cut must not perform a delete immediately, but only after paste.
Copy would just take card(s) into clipboard somehow with different flavors for pasting into our own address books, text editors etc.
Paste could helpfully also work e.g. if a mailing list is selected in the directory pane.

We have Bug 339227 for cut/copy/paste of cards (and bug 512942 for messages). That's good enough.

Comment 14

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Looks OK, but Only skimmed.