Re: Some thoughts on the new message parts UI (long!)

[Albrecht Dreß <albrecht dress arcor de>]

Am 21.08.03 13:11 schrieb(en) Steffen Klemer:
>> the tree can be quite long. remeber, people sometime do receive 
>> pictures.

The tree can also be quite wide, as we now (in the cvs) have additional 
information for some mime types, e.g. the sender and subject for embedded 
message/rfc822 parts, and (in my local playground, to be released when 
gpgme 0.4.3 is ready) the overall signature status for application/pgp-
signature. We could think about more... So there *will* be a horizontal 
scrollbar if the message contains such parts.

> That are just some thoughts, I will make a picture later this day :)

A mockup of what you think about would be helpful!

> But I like the other idea more with tabs for each attachment the tree on 
> the 2nd tab rigth after "content".

IMHO adding tabs for each attachment (== mime part?) is NOT a good idea as 
messages tend to be increasingly complicated. Think of multipart/mixed, 
containing a multipart/alternative (as mua's sending html and plain parts 
*are* reality, unfortunately!) plus some attachments, of which one is a 
message/rfc822 with the same structure, everything put into a multipart/
signed container with the application/pgp-signature (e.g. see the *simple* 
example). This all is perfectly standard-compliant, but having 10 or 15 
tabs just breaks usability. The separated tree view has been an attempt to 
show all text (plain or html, as you like) parts and headers immediately, 
and to keep an overwiev of the structure and attachments separately.

> Then tabs on the rigth side should be the best solution (or better: a 
> config-option for right, left, top or bottom tabs ;)

Right-side might be nice if we could rotate the label strings. I'm not 
sure if pango can do that; maybe we had to render it into a pixmap. 
Hmmm... But *please* do not add a config option for label positioning! 
That dialog is crowded already.

Just my ¤ 0.01...

Cheers, Albrecht.

-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
  Albrecht Dreß  -  Johanna-Kirchner-Straße 13  -  D-53123 Bonn (Germany)
        Phone (+49) 228 6199571  -  mailto:albrecht.dress@arcor.de
_________________________________________________________________________

Balsa-Example-Tree.png

PGP signature