359228 - Need 'Reply with Stationery (Template)' option

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Penelope Graveyard :: Mail Window, defect, P5)

Description

[Matt Dudziak]

Penelope needs the ability to reply using a Template (Stationery in Eudora terminology). This option should, of course, work when using 'Reply all' and 'Reply Quoting Selection'.

Comment 1

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

Core bug 21210.  See also bug 107876, bug 262281, 

Comment 4

[Karsten Düsterloh]

So, with your claim in 21210 "that the Penelope team might actually implement this in less than the 8 1/2 years", I'm all ears how this shall look like. :)

Will it be possible to have variables like $date, $quote(line1 to line5), $MyGreetingNo8, and such? Will I be able to choose the template based on filter actions?

Comment 5

[Jeff Beckley]

(In reply to comment #4)
> Will it be possible to have variables like $date, $quote(line1 to line5),
> $MyGreetingNo8, and such? Will I be able to choose the template based on filter
> actions?

Variable substitution will not be part of the implementation.  Classic Eudora just has the ability to fill out fixed values in the various headers and body.  There will be a filter action for it, though.

Comment 6

[Matt Dudziak]

(In reply to comment #4)
> So, with your claim in 21210 "that the Penelope team might actually implement
> this in less than the 8 1/2 years", I'm all ears how this shall look like. :)
> 
> Will it be possible to have variables like $date, $quote(line1 to line5),
> $MyGreetingNo8, and such? Will I be able to choose the template based on filter
> actions?
> 


As Jeff indicated, variable substitution will not be part of it. Frankly, I wonder how many people would actually use it. When we get to implementing it, we might be well-served by taking a vote of our users to see.

Matt

Comment 7

[Tenga Wataru]

Variable templates are used in at least the following email clients, so some of us do very much want to use them: The Bat!, Becky! Internet Mail, EdMax, Hidemaru Mail, Eclair, Gaucho, KMail (KDE), Sylpheed, Claws-Mail. I have trouble imagining what good is a template without variables.

Comment 8

[Matt Dudziak]

(In reply to comment #7)
> Variable templates are used in at least the following email clients, so some of
> us do very much want to use them: The Bat!, Becky! Internet Mail, EdMax,
> Hidemaru Mail, Eclair, Gaucho, KMail (KDE), Sylpheed, Claws-Mail. I have
> trouble imagining what good is a template without variables.
> 

Then it would probably be good to open a new bug for something like:

'Templates need support for variable substitution' 

as this bug is really just for an option to reply|reply all|reply quoting selection using a template.

Matt

Comment 9

[Karsten Düsterloh]

I didn't meant to impose the "one right way" or something like that, I'm just curious. Being able to choose a template based on filter rules surely is a step into the right direction! With that in place, implementing useful ;-) templates will be much easier...

Comment 10

[william drescher]

A template without variable substitution would be quite useful by itself.
I need to reply to numerous inquiries with boilerplate and being able to pick a template would make it much easier.
Having said that, the ability to use variable substitution would be a big bonus.
The feature needs to be simple enough that it can be used as a simple stationary selection, or a stationary with boilerplate, or (hopefully) an advanced stationary with a fixed (by the developer) variable substitution.
A full scripting language would be even nicer, but, I agree, a different task.

Comment 11

[Arivald]

> A template without variable substitution would be quite useful by itself.
> I need to reply to numerous inquiries with boilerplate and being able to pick a
> template would make it much easier.
> Having said that, the ability to use variable substitution would be a big
> bonus.
> The feature needs to be simple enough that it can be used as a simple
> stationary selection, or a stationary with boilerplate, or (hopefully) an
> advanced stationary with a fixed (by the developer) variable substitution.

You may try to use my extension, called "Stationery" (https://addons.mozilla.org/pl/thunderbird/addon/4394)
It is designed to work like OE Stationery. But it works only in HTML editing mode. I plan to add plain-text mode support in future, along with support for  variables/placeholders.

Comment 13

[Sylvestre Ledru [:Sylvestre]]

Penelope didn't see any activity in the vcs for the last 8 years, closing.