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TOFU in KDE-PIM Features Branch

awinterz's picture
Submitted by awinterz on Fri, 11/03/2006 - 14:46.

Yesterday Pradeepto added the TOFU (an acronym for something in German) feature to KMail in the KDE-PIM Features Branch. TOFU provides top-posting -- see the "Insert signatures above quoted text" option in KMail's Composer configuration -- as well as composer window edit options for: Prepend Signature; Append Signature; and Insert Signature at Cursor Position.

As usual, you will find this and other neat new features in $SVN/branches/work/kdepim-3.5.5+

Sorry there are no pre-built packages available for this branch. You will need to compile and install this code yourself.

Feedback and testers needed. Please send your comments to kmail-devel@kde.org or directly to me.

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jakob petsovits's picture

Oh yeah, top-posting

Submitted by jakob petsovits on Sat, 11/04/2006 - 19:27.

[insert proper flame against top-posting here. see other educated opinions about why KMail should really try to educate its users instead of giving in to bad practice.]

Btw, how's KDE-PIM 4 doing?

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zander's picture

Saying no to features.

Submitted by zander on Sat, 11/04/2006 - 12:05.

For the long term health of the application adding features and options that are only usefull for a small amount of users is probably a bad idea.
The feature of top-posting does not really fall in line with the rest of the software. For example; the menu option to insert your signature is placed in the 'append' menu. Did you rename that? And will is know where to insert something even after you already edited the message?

In usability there is the design that if you create your software for one or two persons only, in contrary to everyone and his dog, then it will be very usefull for everyone.
I would like to see that in KMail as well, where one or two common personas are created and everything that this user doesn't need does not enter KMail. That would probably cut the amount of config options in half.

In short; I hope that this feature never reaches the mainline code.

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martin's picture

Persona

Submitted by martin on Sat, 11/04/2006 - 17:00.

Lisa likes Spam and windsurfing. Her surfer friends have short attention spans and are impatient. For this reason she prefers to place new text in the beginning of her email messages. If there is lots of quoted text first, her friends tend to lose interest and never read the actual message.

There. Can the feature be include now, please?

Seriously, though: Free software was always developed by hackers writing for themselves. There is simply no case for dropping this model, where software is developed for real world people, in favour of a corporate model where code is written for fictitious "personas" dreamt up by usability people.

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superstoned's picture

hmmm

Submitted by superstoned on Sat, 11/04/2006 - 00:23.

now i like the additional features in the KDE PIM + branch, but topposting is imho one of the worst things on the web. i fanatically hate it, and I THINK I'M RIGHT. it's unnatural to have conversations backwards, and it's even worse if you intermingle both styles.

ok, it's not such a big problem with 2-3 mails, but even on short threads, it's annoying.

maybe this is a good explanation (from dr Con Kolivas):

Top-posting is the practice of replying to an email and placing your text at the top of the reply, before all other text. We prefer to use bottom-posting because it is the easiest way to maintain a coherently flowing email conversation. (...) Eg.:

---

I hate pie!

> We're well too. Please bring a pie

>> Hello. Great! How are you? We'll be here on the 4th.
>> What do you want us to bring?

>>> Hi. How are you? When are you coming to our house?
---

compare to:

---

>>> Hi.

>> Hello

>>> How are you?

>> Great! How are you?

> We're well too.

>>> When are you coming to our house?

>> We'll be here on the 4th.
>> What do you want us to bring?

> Please bring a pie.

I hate pie!
---

Now imagine if there were multiple people and the discussion diverging into multiple directions and threads.

See also: http://www.zip.com.au/~akpm/linux/patches/stuff/top-posting.txt

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