Re: should notmuch handle or generate message responses (RFC 9078) (or, "why can't i 👍 an e-mail message?")

[Tomi Ollila <tomi.ollila@iki.fi>]

On Thu, Aug 05 2021, Daniel Kahn Gillmor wrote:

> Hi notmuch folks--
>
> RFC 9078 is an experimental draft "Reaction: Indicating Summary Reaction
> to a Message":
>
> https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9078.html
>
> In short form, this lets you "thumbs up" an e-mail message without
> sending a longer reply.
>
> Basically, it formalizes a way to respond to an e-mail with a single
> emoji sequence [0] by sending a message using the following headers:
>
>  - In-Reply-To: <some-message-id@example.com>
>  - Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
>  - Content-Disposition: reaction
>
>
> [0] https://www.unicode.org/reports/tr51/#def_emoji_sequence Note that
>     "emoji sequence" is *not* just "a series of emoji characters", but
>     rather it is a sequence of codepoints that is typically expected to
>     render as a single emoji, for example a raised hand with dark skin
>     tone is U+270B RAISED HAND followed by U+1F3FF EMOJI MODIFIER
>     FITZPATRICK TYPE-6
>
>
> Currently in Notmuch these responses would be rendered as simple, short
> one-line text replies.
>
> Some questions for notmuch to consider:
>
>  0) Should a message that conforms to this standard be treated
>     differently by notmuch than any other message?  If the answer is
>     "nope" then the rest of the questions don't make sense :P
>
>  1) does the database need any modification to store/report these things
>     as distinct responses?
>
>  2) should "notmuch new" treat the message differently upon ingestion?
>
>  3) should message threading information count the list of messages in
>     the thread differently depending on how many messages are
>     "response" messages?
>
>  4) How should a notmuch frontend decide when to clear the "unread" flag
>     from such a response message?
>
>  5) Should notmuch frontends facilitate creation of this kind of
>     response?
>
>  6) how should a frontend render the summaries of these responses?

I'd wait for "standards track" ;D (or de-facto usage it that takes too long...)

Tomi

>
> Interesting times,
>
>  --dkg