Re: [PATCH 6/9] Reply to individual messages using message library

[Keith Amidon <camalot@picnicpark.org>]

{-- Fri, 27 Nov 2009 21:22:36 -0800: Carl <cworth@cworth.org> wrote: --}


  Carl> On Fri, 27 Nov 2009 05:30:12 -0800, camalot@picnicpark.org wrote:
  >> From: Keith Amidon <keith@nicira.com>
  >> 
  >> As an alternative to creating a reply from the current thread, this
  >> commit provides functions to create replies directly in emacs using
  >> the message library.
  >> 
  >> A future commit will provide keybindings so that they are easy to
  >> change if a different set is preferred.

  Carl> Can you fill me in a little bit here? The message-mode
  Carl> documentation is quite thin on what the distinctions are between
  Carl> "reply", "wide-reply", and "followup".

Roughly this is my understanding of the
differences:

   reply: reply only to the sender and no other recipients
   wide reply: reply to all recipients (removing self)
   followup: mainly intended for replying to news articles I believe is
        the trigger for the Mail-Followup-To behavior.  See:

        http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/message/Mailing-Lists.html#Mailing-Lists

  Carl> Meanwhile, I don't think we have any need to support different
  Carl> implementations of reply, (that is---I don't want one binding
  Carl> for a "notmuch-based reply" and another for a
  Carl> "message-mode-based reply" without any functional difference in
  Carl> the result).

I agree.  It wasn't clear to me when each type of behavior was useful
and so I erred on the side of making everything available with long
key bindings with the idea that as it became clear what was most useful
the common short key bindings could get those functions.

  Carl> Instead I'd like to define what the functionality is that we
  Carl> want here, and then provide that. I do like taking advantage of
  Carl> things like message-mode functionality wherever it exists, so
  Carl> I'm happy to have the default reply button do
  Carl> (with-current-notmuch-show-message (message-reply)) or whatever.

  Carl> But meanwhile, I'll *also* want to understand what the
  Carl> variations are here so that we can *also* implement them inside
  Carl> of "notmuch reply" so that non-emacs-based interfaces can easily
  Carl> get at similar functionality.

  Carl> So I'm holding off on pushing this patch until I understand it
  Carl> better, (and documentation strings for the new functions might
  Carl> help for that---provided they have more detail than the
  Carl> corresponding documentation strings for the message-mode
  Carl> functions being called).

I'll try to improve my docstings next time around.  Sorry about that!

        --- Keith