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<div id="newHeader" style="font-size: x-small; padding:1em;
background-color:rgba(220,220,240,0.4); border-radius:3px;"> <b>Subject:</b>
Re: The infamous Mozilla core editor<br>
<b>To:</b> <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:axel.grude@gmail.com">axel.grude@gmail.com</a>, <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:tb-planning@mozilla.org">tb-planning@mozilla.org</a> <br>
<b>From: </b>Bron Gondwana<br>
<b>Sent: </b>Monday, 09/03/2015 12:00:19 12:00 GMT ST +0000
[Week 10]<br>
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id="mid_1425902419_1197395_237793889_238F91A3_webmail_messagingengine_com"
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type="cite">
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On Mon, Mar 9, 2015, at 09:04 PM, Axel Grude wrote:<br>
<blockquote class=" cite" id="Cite_3365203" type="cite">
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<div>Dear Bron, <br>
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<div> </div>
<div> yeah I think that is (the start of) a good solution, one
question is obviously when to do this? On inserting the
style (and keep a track of UUID / or use messageid in
Composer), when sending or (like so many email clients) on
receiving?<br>
</div>
<div> </div>
<div> From the point of view of reusing the old layouts in an
email thread (so when I reply to a reply), should it be
possible to reuse my own layouts as a starting point? <br>
</div>
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</blockquote>
<div> </div>
<div>So I see where we're diverging here a bit. You're thinking
of the composer UI as basically a word processor and the HTML
email as interoperable (to some degree) documents.<br>
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<div> </div>
<div>I agree on the concept of a word processor feel when
composing emails, but I believe that quoted parts of email
should be (apart from some splitting to insert inline responses)
pretty much unedited.<br>
</div>
</blockquote>
definitely, that is exactly one of the reasons I was lamenting the
global CSS namespace. You should have full control on your own level
without affecting quoted material.<br>
<blockquote class=" cite"
id="mid_1425902419_1197395_237793889_238F91A3_webmail_messagingengine_com"
cite="mid:1425902419.1197395.237793889.238F91A3@webmail.messagingengine.com"
type="cite">
<div> </div>
<div>Which then gets us to the issue of "purity" in the content.
Even if the editor is using styles internally, you can still
"render" the resulting HTML.<br>
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</blockquote>
Again, I agree 100% . Which brings up whether we should implement a
"compatibility mode" that copies styles in-line when we hit send
(for those mail clients that ignore CSS class definitions)<br>
<br>
<blockquote class=" cite"
id="mid_1425902419_1197395_237793889_238F91A3_webmail_messagingengine_com"
cite="mid:1425902419.1197395.237793889.238F91A3@webmail.messagingengine.com"
type="cite">
<div> </div>
<blockquote class=" cite" id="Cite_8710311" type="cite">
<div>
<div> Or at least we should be able to pre-define our styles
(which we currently already have a drop-down for) in a
"Style template" sheet. This might just be a simple HTML
file with a style block in the <head> section and some
preview examples for each style. Also semantic as such as
<h1> would probably need a new attribute "styleBase"
that could be used for inheriting certain parts such as
font-family and margins. In Word processors you usually also
have a rule of what tag follows next (e.g. if you hit enter
after h1,h2,h3 etc you expect a <p>, <li>
expects another <li>) so I wonder if this is something
that should/could be built in as well, or is the current
(hard-coded) way good enough.<br>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<div> </div>
<div>Predictable behaviour everywhere vs fully customisable.
There's a rabbit hole for us!<br>
</div>
</blockquote>
Yep. I am volunteering for building a UI, that's my speciality.
Whatever it will be, there will be modeless windows involved so
people can try out styles and move the layout definition around
while trying.<br>
<blockquote class=" cite"
id="mid_1425902419_1197395_237793889_238F91A3_webmail_messagingengine_com"
cite="mid:1425902419.1197395.237793889.238F91A3@webmail.messagingengine.com"
type="cite">
<div> </div>
<blockquote class=" cite" id="Cite_1878327" type="cite">
<div>
<div> Another tool that is BADLY needed is the format painter
which can be used to apply an ad-hoc format of one section
to another. Finally I think it would be great if block and
line level outlines of the currently focused elements could
be made visible in order to see where a style definition
starts and ends. Nested Font tags seem to be especially
designed to endlessly confuse the users, as they add a huge
amount of unpredictability when you are using the cursor to
navigate between different parts of the text. I think all of
this needs a big amount of conceptual work before we even
think of implementing any of this.<br>
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<div> </div>
<div>This I definitely agree with.<br>
</div>
</blockquote>
Unfortunatele that is also one of the most difficult things to
implement as you always have to make decisions which of the
"resulting styles" shall actually be copied (pulled from inner span
/ font level, paragraph, cell, row levels etc.) - lot's of work in
this one. but also one of the most rewarding areas from the UI
experience POV.<br>
<blockquote class=" cite"
id="mid_1425902419_1197395_237793889_238F91A3_webmail_messagingengine_com"
cite="mid:1425902419.1197395.237793889.238F91A3@webmail.messagingengine.com"
type="cite">
<div> </div>
<blockquote class=" cite" id="Cite_4837411" type="cite">
<div>
<div> If you have an archive of the list, you can also see my
suggestions in <br>
</div>
<div> </div>
<div> "Google Summer of Code 2014 - Proposal to Improve
Composer UI"<br>
</div>
<div> </div>
<div> where I did some ground work on what could be done to
improve Thunderbird's Email Editor, so I don't want to
repeat a lot of things I have mentioned there. Particularly
an email I wrote on 07/Feb/2014 which has a ton of
screenshots and ideas, if you want a copy of it please email
me off-list... at that stage I still "abused" the
<head> section of the email to carry my styles but I
now think <br>
</div>
<div>this is a bad idea is it often discarded.<br>
</div>
<div> </div>
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</blockquote>
<div> </div>
<div>I'm pretty sure I already have it.<br>
</div>
<div> </div>
<div>I think that CSS is generally a bad idea where your content
is likely to be embedded somewhere else (webmail or even just a
UI which uses HTML itself on a desktop).<br>
</div>
<div> </div>
<div>The problem with CSS can be spelled out in two words: global
variables. Styles are global variables, and even if you prefix
them with something unique, anybody consuming your content is
required to validate all your names to make sure they don't
tread on not only anything in the surrounding code, but also any
other messages which are being rendered in the same context.
It's a horror.<br>
</div>
</blockquote>
well there is the child selector (>) so maybe this could be used
to somewhat alleviate this. But another problem is that if you quote
and your style definitions happen to be in an area you "snip out"
you have the added problem of potentially losing your styles. So
Composer needs to keep track of these and move them around.<br>
<br>
<blockquote class=" cite"
id="mid_1425902419_1197395_237793889_238F91A3_webmail_messagingengine_com"
cite="mid:1425902419.1197395.237793889.238F91A3@webmail.messagingengine.com"
type="cite">
<div> </div>
<div>If only there was a way to specify styles as being lexically
namespaced to a DIV - you could just wrap your email in a DIV,
set styles on it, and use them inside to your heart's content,
with simple short names or just style the existing semantic
tags.<br>
</div>
</blockquote>
Do we need a new <br>
<br>
"inherit = none;"<br>
<br>
rule? Isn't the direct child selector ">" sufficient?<br>
<br>
Axel<br>
<br>
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