325930 - Integrate Quick File into TB/Suite

Status: NEW

(Thunderbird :: Mail Window Front End, enhancement)

Description

[Paul Tomlin]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8) Gecko/20051111 Firefox/1.5
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8) Gecko/20051111 Firefox/1.5

The Quick File extension provides keyboard based filing and navigation. Integrate it into core :)

Reproducible: Always




As per IRC conversation, a bug to discuss how to integrate QF into core.

Comment 1

[PeterG]

(In reply to comment #0)
I believe this would be a superb addition to the 1.8.1 branch and the upcoming Thunderbird 2.0. In migrating from Pegasus Mail, I and several others, were quite frustrated by the means available to file an incoming mail, especially when one has some 70 folders and sub-folders (business and personal mail). The choices were navigating through the menu structure with "Message-Move....(through many submenus) or dragging the message to a folder which may be quite a "distance" away.

What would make this almost ideal would be also as regards sending emails. Instead of say automatically dropping the email in the Sent folder (necessitating the filing of that elsewhere most often), it would be good if there were an option that, on sending, the integrated equivalent of Quick File would pop up asking where one would like to file the sent email.

Comment 2

[Paul Tomlin]

With regards sending mail, I suggest a better approach would be the creation of a Fcc: option in the addresses section (like To:, Cc: and Bcc:) which uses an auto-complete field to select the folder. This could possibly override the default location for the "Sent Items" folder. I think this would be less intrusive than a popup or somesuch.

Comment 3

[Dan Mosedale (:dmosedale, :dmose)]

I'd like to propose that having good keyboard support for filing is a worthwhile goal for Thunderbird2, whether it's in the form of QuickFile or I believe Neil had a slightly different proposal.  Perhaps he can elaborate...

Comment 4

[[e-mail]]

I was thinking that it might be possible to integrate the folder picker that we currently use for filters and advanced search. However that would probably rely on fayt support which is in two pieces the first currently waiting for review.

Comment 5

[Paul Tomlin]

Just so that we all know what's been done within QF to date, it currently handles

moving/copying messages from 3-pane
moving/copying message from mail-window
navigating from 3-pane and mail-window
creating selected folders if they don't exist

As a by-product, there is an rdf:mailnewsfolders nsIAutoCompleteSession implementation in JavaScript which returns the 'label' of the folder, see bug #295532 for [stalled] discussion regarding adding name/value lookups to auto-complete textboxes. 

I can see that it might be useful to build a binding [?] of the auto-complete which can then be used easier to implement QF features more logically than the existing extension.

Comment 6

[Paul Tomlin]

(In reply to comment #4)
> I was thinking that it might be possible to integrate the folder picker that we
> currently use for filters and advanced search. 

I believe you're talking about the combo/dropdown item, which I don't see as a great UI for keyboard use, granted I'm probably biased though.

Comment 7

[Paul Tomlin]

After a chat with dmose, neil and mcsmurf the other day I thought I'd have a swing at implementing a CPP port of QuickFileAutoCompleteSession http://www.mozdev.org/source/browse/quickfile/src/content/quickfile-acs.js as a component [/source/toolkit/components/mailnewsfolders?], using nsGlobalHistory as a guide. Also to convert from nsIAutoCompleteSession to nsIAutoCompleteResult (xpfe -> toolkit?). In the process learning a bit more about the core code :)

I don't know if this is the 'correct' way and/or place to be doing it, but my thought is that a folder selection component/widget/thingy would be useful in a few places (filters dialog, navigation, mail move/copy) and thus making it self contained would make it easier to use.

But there are a couple of issues that I think I could use a hand with. Primarily I'm not experienced with CPP, not having written any for many years. I also don't have a build environment that I could use to test. So I think what I'm looking for is someone who can look at bit's of code and advise me where it's going awry, merge it into their tree and see what works and what doesn't. If anyone is willing to take that on then please let me know. It's not likely to be a great deal of work once I get my head around the language again.

I'm going to try to sort out a build here, but last time I looked it was a little complicated and I got horribly lost.

Comment 8

[Lars Huttar]

This isn't about integrating QF into Core, it's more about feature requests; but I see other comments are in a similar vein.
Two items are on my wishlist for greater keyboard usability of message filing:

- When there is only one possible completion, Enter should take it, without having to hit down-arrow to select it. (Somebody mentioned this on addons.mozilla.org, and having used QF a while now I agree.)

- I read that you're adding "ignorance of descendants of the Trash folder" in completion for v. 0.16. I would like to add other folders to exclude, or at least one: I have an "Old" folder (basically an archive) with older copies of most of my other folders, and they introduce unwanted extra completion possibilities. An extra option to specify a folder (subtree) to ignore would be nice.

Comment 9

[Robin]

I have 309 items of mail sitting in my sent folder. They should be filed into their correct folders but it is such an effort to do this after the event, even using quickfile. I would like to be able to easily file mail into its folder at the time it is sent. At the moment this very hard because I can not drill down to the correct folder and I have hundreds of folders. I used to use pegasus and this did not give me any problems placing a sent mail directly into its ultimate folder. I just typed the folder name and with every letter I narrowed down the search. In Thunderbird with every letter typed I used to end up with the first item in the folder list beginning with that letter (currently nothing happens no jumping to the first folder begining with that letter. I  do not know why this has stopped but in any case if it worked it would not be good enough)

Robin

Comment 10

[Scott MacGregor]

Paul, interested in starting off with a similar, but an easier to bite off feature? Might make more sense to start small first. 

I'm interested in adding a menu item and a keyboard short cut for copying/moving to the previously copied folder like mail.app. See Bug #338147. Would be a much simpler change but effects similar portions of the code base so you could start to get your feet wet.