[Users] [Bug 3214] [PATCH] Introduce preference to make cursor key up leaves message body optional

[Michael Gmelin]

On Wed, 18 Jun 2014 09:43:43 +0200
Roman Brusa <r.brusa at gmx.ch> wrote:

> Aus der Nachricht von noreply at thewildbeast.co.uk vom Wed, 18 Jun 2014
> 07:00:50 +0000:
> 
> >After a short discussion on IRC, we've decided not to accept this
> >patch: we don't want to add hidden preferences for every little
> >change we introduce, and also, there is a (more) usable alternative
> >to go on top of an email, which is the Home key :)
> 
> Objection: For me, this is not a "little change". While answering and
> editing a message, I do very often go up and down with cursor keys.
> Now it goes up to the header fields, and what is worse, it changes the
> sender account! So if I'm not very careful, there's a good chance that
> the mail goes from the wrong sender account.
> 
> I try hard to use the home key instead ever since the new "feature"
> came. But first, that is not the same, and second, it's not easy to
> change behavior that you got used to for many years.
> 
> I would much appreciate to get the old behavior back.
> 

I haven't used the home key in about 15 years, my laptop doesn't even
have a dedicated one (only a key combination that doesn't work in
the environment I run claws in for technical reasons), my older 15 inch
laptop had one, but I still didn't use it since it was in a very
awkward place that would interrupt the workflow.

Also, scrolling up by holding down the cursor up key is not uncommon
and a different functionality than just hitting Home, especially on
smaller screens. That's what I noticed myself, I don't do this to just
go to the very top, but to glance on the entire email thread until it
won't move any more. I observed myself doing this a couple of times
just while writing this email. I can't imagine I'm the only one doing
this.

So the main issue here isn't really "go to beginning of mail", but
"scroll backwards".

It's not a big deal for me personally, since I can patch claws myself on
update and I'm building it from source anyway. I just want to repeat my
concern that it is very unusual for an UI application to behave like
this and expecting people to change the way they're using such a basic
widget like a scrollable text input area for just one place in one
program is violating HMI expectations.

There is a well understood and working way to change to the subject
line (Shift-TAB) which works universally in all GTK apps and
afaik all windowed desktop environments and regardless of where the
cursor is, so I don't understand the need for this feature in the first
place. It seems to be designed so that it's used accidentally more
often than intentionally. Thinking about it, I would prefer to remove
the feature or at the very least make it configurable and disable it by
default.


- Michael

-- 
Michael Gmelin