Re: Reusing descriptive sender name when replying

[Alexander Adolf <alexander.adolf@condition-alpha.com>]

inasprecali <inasprecali@disroot.org> writes:

> [...]
> Setting the notmuch-always-prompt-for-sender variable to t does not
> help, since its description says (as of 0.31.4): [...]

The documentation of notmuch-always-prompt-for-sender describes that
behaviour rather clearly:
---------------------------- Begin Quote -----------------------------
Always prompt for the From: address when composing or forwarding a message.

This is not taken into account when replying to a message, because in that case
the From: header is already filled in by notmuch.
----------------------------- End Quote ------------------------------
So will not have an effect for replies. Which seems to make sense to me,
as that way the reply then comes from the account that the other guy
sent his message to in the first place.

Are you suing any text completion package in emacs (e.g. company)?
Notmuch provides completion candidates for email addresses, too. Thus,
when I'm unhappy with the from address in the message composition
buffer, I just move the cursor to the beginning of the "From:" field,
type C-k to clear it, and start typing my name. The text completion
automatically pops up a list of candidate addresses (including names)
from the notmuch database. Depending on the completion package you are
using, you may have to trigger completion manually, though. Still not
great, but it works even if you forget to add the prefix to the command.

How about this (off the top of my head):
notmuch-always-prompt-for-sender could admittedly be seen as a bit of a
misnomer, since it prompts always, except when it's a reply (i.e. not
really always). A new variable could perhaps be added (say,
notmuch-always-prompt-for-sender-reply) that changes the behaviour. When
both, notmuch-always-prompt-for-sender and this new variable are set to
t, then the user is also prompted for the sender address when replying.
If the new variable defaulted to nil, the change would even be backwards
compatible (i.e. no change of behaviour for existing emacs
configurations).

On rare occasions I have a similar use-case as you. If someone sends
email to a generic email address (e.g. sales@example.com), I want to
reply with my personal address to give it a more personal touch. This
doesn't occur often for me, so I have been able to live with manually
updating the "From:" field in the composition window (with support from
a text completion package as described). I have thus never felt the need
for a more automated solution like you are asking for, but have some
sympathy for you request. But then I'm not a developer, so it'll be for
others to decide.


Hoping to have helped,

  --alexander