Dual-semantic column "Sender/Recipient" is inadequate.

[rcubetrac]

Reported by kaz on 3 Aug 2010 23:57 UTC as Trac ticket #1486891

Roundcube has an "intelligent" column in the header list view, which shows the Recipient when the selected folder is Drafts or Sent, and the Sender when it's Inbox and other folders.

The problem is that this is not adequate for user-defined folders.

Firstly, there is apparently no way to configure a folder to be like Sent (the column shows Recipient) or like Inbox (column shows Sender). I have some folders in which the messages are from me, so all that the Sender column shows is Kaz Kylheku for every message.

Secondly, there is effectively a third type of folder: one which contains messages which are both incoming and outgoing. I use such folders to keep track of conversations with people. This works great with the threaded view and all. In this type of folder, we want this column to show the Sender for messages which came in, and the Recipient for messages that went out.

Basically, it is never very informative to display the user's own address!!!

For instance, suppose I have a "Complaints" folder where I file numerous complaint conversations with different people. For any message which is from me, I just see that the Sender is "Kaz Kylheku". But I don't know who the recipient is without clicking on the message to get it in the preview pane.

Ideally, the program should have three separate kinds of colums rather than a too-clever behavior-switching column. Have a Recipient column, a Sender column, and a Recipient/Sender column. The Recipient will always show the To:, the Sender will always show the From: and the Sender/Recipient will, on a per message basis, intelligently decide which address to display, making it clear whether it's From or To.

These should be configurable on a per-folder basis. The Drafts folder can show just the recipients, and Inbox can show just the Sender column. For a conversation folder, the user can turn on the combined Recipient/Sender column. Or, alternately, turn on both the Sender and Recipient columns.

Keywords: columns
Migrated-From: http://trac.roundcube.net/ticket/1486891

[rcubetrac]

Comment by kaz on 11 Aug 2010 05:00 UTC

I changed my mind about this, and would like to withdraw this feature request.

The problem only occurs if you have a folder where you have both send and received messages, and are maintaining separate independent conversations with different correspondents.

In a folder dedicated to one correspondent, it is clearest to always show the sender.

In a folder with multi-user discussions, the same thing holds. The recipient of the mails is the discussion itself, and uninteresting. You want to see the sender of every message

In a folder with separate one-on-one conversations with different correspondents, however, threading resolves the problem of outgoing messages appearing ambiguous since they are grouped together with their associated incoming messages.

Users should turn on threading in such folders, hence this is a non-problem.

[rcubetrac]

Comment by elvis skywalker on 26 Aug 2010 13:26 UTC

This feature could still be useful for users who use multiple addresses/identities that are aliased to a single account, and want to see this in their Inbox view. I don't consider it to be a high priority, but I have had a few users request this.

[rcubetrac]

Comment by @thomascube on 27 Jul 2012 14:50 UTC

Marked #1487062 as a duplicate of this request.

[rcubetrac]

Comment by @alecpl on 11 Aug 2012 12:13 UTC

Done in e0efd8f

[rcubetrac]

Status changed by @alecpl on 11 Aug 2012 12:13 UTC

new => closed

[rcubetrac]

Milestone changed by @alecpl on 11 Aug 2012 12:13 UTC

later => 0.8.1