488469 - put signature editing in UI (add full HTML editor)

Status: NEW

(MailNews Core :: Account Manager, enhancement)

Description

[rsx11m]

+++ This bug was initially created as a clone of Bug #324495 +++

The original bug introduced a textbox for signature editing in the main panel of the account settings. While this allows the easy creation of simple text signatures as well as basic HTML markup, a full HTML editor in the WYSIWYG sense is desirable (see bug 324495 for examples of other e-mail clients).

Aim of this follow-up bug is to either extend the existing textbox to an HTML-capable editing box (which may be difficult to realize given the space constraints and the need for at least a limited toolbar), or to introduce a separate HTML-edit dialog which pops up on demand to create more complex signatures. This will also provide a necessary step towards the introduction
of multiple selectable signatures for an identity as asked for in bug 73567.

Comment 1

[Chris Brand]

Postbox already has a text-editor with basic formatting features. maybe this could just be ported back to thunderbird?

Comment 2

[Phil Ringnalda (:philor)]

Postbox is not open source.

Comment 3

[raths]

It will be great !

Comment 5

[Jim Porter (:squib)]

Given that there's already an HTML editor for message composition, is there a way we could use that somehow?

Comment 6

[rsx11m]

See bug 324495 comment #39, the embedded editor could certainly be utilized
but would need some work to get all elements. Some interface is described in https://developer.mozilla.org/en/XPCOM_Interface_Reference/NsIEditor and its
use in https://developer.mozilla.org/en/XUL/editor as a good starting point,
if someone wants to look into this.

Comment 7

[Dan Mosedale (:dmosedale, :dmose)]

For new code, I think we'd generally prefer xhtml with content-editable, if it works for the use case in question.  In general, xhtml semantics tend to be better defined and better tested the XUL semantics in places where it's possible to use XHTML.

Comment 8

[rsx11m]

There is a fairly old but still functional Midas demo for HTML implemention,
> http://www.mozilla.org/editor/midasdemo/ https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Midas

Comment 9

[Jim Porter (:squib)]

(In reply to comment #7)
> For new code, I think we'd generally prefer xhtml with content-editable, if it
> works for the use case in question.  In general, xhtml semantics tend to be
> better defined and better tested the XUL semantics in places where it's
> possible to use XHTML.

Does the message composer use XUL then? And if, say, someone wrote a (good) XHTML editor for sigs, would/should this get pushed into the message composer? I don't have much (read: any) experience with the message composer area, but it sounds like using XHTML might be good for the composer too (and might fix some of the miscellaneous composer bugs out there).

If all this is the case, an XHTML sig editor could be a good testbed for a new-and-improved message composer.

Comment 10

[Dan Mosedale (:dmosedale, :dmose)]

The message composer uses XUL and is indeed something of a mess.  We have occasionally speculated about rewriting it to use XHTML, though I suspect we'd probably end up changing the UX significantly at the same time (eg I don't even know if Bryan would be inclined to use a separate window at all).  I'm unsure how similar the use cases are, but we'd certainly happily draw across any experience that we could...

Comment 11

[rsx11m]

As far as I know it's an extended/modified version of the suite's Composer, just not publishing web pages but encoding them as e-mails afterwards (this may be simplifying it a bit, but the point is that the same core code is shared). 

> (comment #9) an XHTML sig editor could be a good testbed for a
> new-and-improved message composer.

Recently there has been some development between SeaMonkey and KompoZer to backport improvements they've made into that code (bug 477840, bug 477845). Obviously, this would also benefit mail/news composition, so it may not be necessary to start over with a Thunderbird-specific XHTML reimplementation.

> (comment #10) to use a separate window at all

Given the space requirements for additional buttons, putting the full editor into its own dialog rather than squeezing everything into the Account Settings may be a good idea (or make a separate Signature page and collect the relevant items from the main page and Composition & Addressing).

Comment 12

[Joe Sabash [:JoeS1]]

(In reply to comment #8)
> There is a fairly old but still functional Midas demo for HTML implemention,
> > http://www.mozilla.org/editor/midasdemo/ https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Midas

This works very well in the mail start page.

So to implement this as a helper for sigs, we'd have to do the following.
Save the current mail start page
Substitute  http://www.mozilla.org/editor/midasdemo/ as the start page
Open the URL
Allow editing
Provide a UI to copy the source for purposes of the sig
Restore the original mail start page

Actually, you can get a real interactive message pane by pasting the following
into the error console evaluate box:
var url1 = "http://www.mozilla.org/editor/midasdemo/";var threePane = Components.classes['@mozilla.org/appshell/window-mediator;1'].getService(Components.interfaces.nsIWindowMediator).getMostRecentWindow("mail:3pane");gBrowser = threePane.document.getElementById("messagepane");gBrowser.loadURI(url1, null, null); 

I don't see any reason not to use a web-based-app for this function.

Comment 13

[rsx11m]

I still think that Neil's suggestion from the other bug to use Composer code
might be the fastest way to go. Here the pointer to the respective XUL part:
http://mxr.mozilla.org/comm-central/source/editor/ui/composer/content/editor.xul

Comment 15

[Mitra Ardron]

I'd like to second this, it seems the discussion got mired into which editor to use, rather than simply using the message composer so that any improvements to there (e.g. changing to XHTML). 

As a shortcut - could someone just put a button that just opened up the selected file in the OS's default text editor, that at least would be better than having to open an editor in the OS, try and find where the file is deep in TB's file systm and edit it. 

- Mitra

Comment 16

[rsx11m]

Mitra, a plain-text editor is already available, there is no longer a need for going with an external text editor to open and create/modify the signature.

Comment 17

[Mitra Ardron]

Yes - except that noone in this thread seems to be able to figure out how to drive it, and I presume it would take less than another year for someone to figure out how to put a link there to "open" the file in the signature.

Comment 20

[Maxime]

Hi,

I created bug #876090 because I thought the #488469 was very old.

Maybe do you have news about it ?

Please, do you plan to add that feature ?

Thank you ;)

Comment 21

[rsx11m]

As a general rule here on bugzilla, there is one bug for one issue, thus opening a new bug on an existing issue would be rather distracting as the discussion on it might occur in several different places and thus would be hard to follow.

I have implemented the current textbox in bug 324495 for Thunderbird 3.0, but don't know how to integrate the full Editor library with all the bells and whistles for nice HTML editing, which was the reason for spinning it off into this bug.

The fact that the bug report here still exist means that (a) it's considered useful to implement, but also (b) that nobody came up yet with an implementation to extend the textbox with a full HTML editor. I'm still hoping that this will happen some day and someone contributes that patch.

Comment 22

[Mitra Ardron]

TB 3.0 - aren't we on 23.0 already, or are there two version number schemes for TB. Anyway, its not in 23.0a2

Comment 23

[rsx11m]

No, indeed I meant 3.0 (its beta 3 at that time, to be exact). There has been some version-number inflation since, so we are at 24.0a1 now on trunk, which will be the next release "branch" after the current 17.0.x releases. You won't see it there either, because this bug here hasn't been fixed yet (i.e., if anything is supposed to happen in this regards, it will be done here).

Cut-off for new features or string-relevant changes in 24.0 will be end of June, so this would be a good time for someone with experience in the Editor library to figure out how to integrate it into the Account Settings dialog.

Comment 24

[rsx11m]

This was already nominated for the papercut list by Caméléon , the full list being at https://wiki.mozilla.org/Thunderbird/Papercuts#Papercut_nominations which I've now seconded. I don't know if this will speed up thing, but it can't hurt to keep it on the radar. :-)