[Design] What is the minimum feature set we can put up with in an early release of Chandler?

[Jeffrey Harris]

Hi Folks,

Here's my list of features I need, basically a few additions to what Ted 
mentioned:

Ted Leung wrote:

> Here are the actions that I actually did:
> 
> * view messages by thread
> * delete a message
> * select  messages and use Mail Act-On! to execute an applescript that 
> examines each message and files it correctly by looking at combinations 
> of the mail headers - call this "filing"

In the filing vein:

Although I've experimented with dozens of filing strategies over the 
years, these days I just go with one big inbox and a filed directory 
(filed == Done).  I don't know if I can strictly say I *need* it to 
dogfood (I'm game to try Travis' parcel), but I'd like to be able to 
convince Chandler to

- read my existing IMAP inbox, treat messages there as NOW
- move messages marked LATER to a LATER IMAP box
- scan that LATER mailbox to see if I triaged through a non-Chandler 
mail client
- similarly, move DONE messages to my filed box
- if an email Chandler knows about used to be in one of these mailboxes 
but isn't anymore, it puts the message in the trash

These steps don't actually seem terribly difficult to implement, but of 
course if everybody has slight variations (that don't reduce to details 
like different names of the relevant mailboxes), we can't hope to 
provide infinite flexibility in the beta timeframe.

As an aside, I currently create tasks by emailing them to myself, but 
I'm hoping Chandler + sharing will give me a similarly robust 
cross-computer task management setup, so I don't think I really need (or 
want) Chandler to take non-email items I'm triaging and stick them in my 
email.

> * click on a URL embedded in a browser
> * mark some read messages as unread for later re-processing - give me a 
> triage based workflow for this
> * reply to messages, including editing the to/cc lines because our 
> default list reply to is wrong, i did work on several replies 
> simultaneously.

I'd add to this that I really use quote handling a lot, both in reading 
messages, and composing them.  This seems non-trivial to implement in 
wx.  I suppose I can live without it, but it would really subtract from 
my experience.  It's painful enough on the Mac where alt e, w doesn't 
make Thunderbird rewrap quotes, I have to use the mouse.  My fingers 
still miss good old alt-q from emacs.

> Things I don't do:
> 
> * compose HTML mail

I neither compose nor read HTML mail.  I hate HTML mail.  If we support 
rendering of HTML mail, I want the ability to disable it like I can in 
Thunderbird. ;)

Finally, generally speaking, I think Thunderbird's keyboard shortcuts 
are inadequate, so I actually think there's a fairly low bar to meet for 
those of us who've regretfully left Mutt/Pine behind and labor our 
wrists in Thunderbird land.

Sincerely,
Jeffrey