Possible Features Related to Reading a Message

This area is for listing all the things you might possibly do when reading a message. OSAF staff will eventually prioritize this list to determine which features should go in which (if any) releases.

Message Display

• Allow zooming in and out on messages
• Show (perhaps optionally, perhaps as tool tips) a number of important messages attributes -- see DisplayedMessageAttributes
• Show quoted material
  • In a different color
  • With vertical bars indicating quotation level (as per Eudora)
  • Rewrappable (i.e., supporting format-flowed)
  • Strip out multiple > signs and extraneous verbose headers from forwards
• Summarize message threads (like Zest does)
• Show list of suggested responses (see filters/auto-suggest)
• Show MessageAnnotation
• Override formatting with user's style sheet
• Auto-rewrap split lines (as preferences option)
• View attachments inline (as preferences option)
• Smart tags (see also ContentParsingFrameworkIssues): automatic recognition of
  • people (as names or email addresses), with hyperlinks to
    • address book entry
    • all messages to/from person
  • places, with hyperlinks to maps (note that email domain can give a rough guesstimate of location)
  • times, with hyperlinks to calendar entries
  • message threads, with links to all messages (e.g., like the trn newsreader does)
    • in this thread
    • in response to this message
    • that this message responds to
    • that this message is forwarded from
    • that are older versions of this one
• Display face header as image
• Accumulate list management information (List-* headers) and display actively (e.g., as buttons at the bottom of the display area)
• Since redirected messages are dangerous, detect such a message and highlight how it was redirected
• Some support for handling long URLs gracefully
• Show (in a separate windowlet) which filters are activated by this message

User Actions

• Change attributes of the message (e.g. flagged, unread)
• Delete the message
• Add sender to {blacklist, whitelist, group alias/nickname alias, address book addressBook }
• Report as spam (to adaptive learning algorithm and/or collaborative filtering service(s))
• Add appointment to calendar based on smart tag
• Add task to task list based on smart tag
• Show which filters are triggered by this message
• Annotate message
• Easy addition of the sender to a whitelist, blacklist, group nickname, or address book (populated with information parsed out of the message, see Smart Tags above)
• Easy creation of Events from email messages (populated with information parsed out of the message, see Smart Tags above)
• Create hyperlink point inside message (e.g. if it's long and rambling) to which other Items can link

Attachments

• Open attachment
• Save attachment to file
• Delete attachment
• Modify attachment metadata

User-selected Changes to Message Display

• Default actions for various sets of headers
  • Always show, even if empty or not present (headers like Date, From, Subject, To, and Cc); these headers should be moved to the top and displayed in the same (setable?) order
  • Never show (headers such as Received, X-Face, and List-* that Chandler handles automatically)
  • Show if present (headers like Reply-{To,Cc,Bcc}, Resent-{From,To,Cc}, and Sender)
  • All other headers normally not shown (these are extended headers)
  • Header names are automatically accumulated so these sets may be configured by selecting from a list
• Show normal/extended/all headers (when showing all headers, they are shown in the order they occur in the message)
• Show/hide message source (e.g. raw HTML)
• Show/hide Message Annotations
• Show/hide messages older than someAge (perhaps someAge would be changed by moving a slider)
• Uncompress (with prompt) compressed (e.g. ZIP'd) attachments
• Strip HTML formatting -- not so you'd see the tags, but in plain text
• Switch between fixed-width and proportional-width
• Rewrap poorly wrapped messages/revert to original, including re-assembling poorly wrapped URLs see email

Supported formats

• Support for
  • plain text and flowed-format
  • RTF
  • formatted HTML
  • raw HTML
  • quoted-printable
  • multi-language encodings, e.g., Unicode
  • showing attached messages inline
  • Base64 encoding
• Inline document display
• Support for Chandler Items, vCard, iCal, and vCal
• Save message to a file as HTML, plain text, and perhaps other formats

Tracking

• Track return receipts
• TrackMailWorkflow

External Resources

Web pages:

• Jamie Zawinski's wish for "intertwingledness" -- i.e. lots of active links in email

Mailing list messages:

• Message sorting and character encoding by Kent Sin
• BruceDykes^? requests that Chandler be able to show attached messages in-line
• BillSeitz asks for easy links to more context
• DarrinBrunner^? asks for Chandler to strip > signs and headers from forwards
• BobWyman^? requests view of message source (raw HTML)
• KevinKautz^? asks for good handling of URLs

Contributors

• AlCho
• DuckySherwood
• ChaoLam - 10 Jan 2003
• GregNoel - 03 Mar 2003