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Apple Theme incorrect reply header text

#1986

When selecting the Apple Theme in Viewer/Composer and replying to an email Mailmate generates a reply header as such:

On 10 Apr 2018, at 4:19, Julius Ceasar wrote:

> Hi there etc etc
> More email body

Apple Mail generates the header as:

> On Apr 10, 2018, at 4:19 AM, Julius Ceasar <julius.ceasar@rome.com> wrote:
>
> Start Julius message

Notice the following:

  1. Apple mail includes the reply header "On Apr 10,..." Inside the > block where as Mailmate does not.
  2. The date formatting done by Apple Mail that does not match what Mailmate uses. These inconsistencies cause the context of the date to be truncated when looking at past emails (was it AM/PM ?) and also incorrect output when looking at quotes that include Mailmate and Apple Mail.
  3. Apple mail includes the email address in inside the angle brackets julius.ceasar@rome.com
  4. There is a single > block before the actual message being replied to starts for nice spacing/visibility in the quote levels. Notice the single > before "> Start Julius Message"

Reported by Adonis · April 10th, 2018 @ 06:40 PM

State: accepted
Milestone: none
Assigned to: benny benny

Activity

  1. benny
    benny
    • State changed from new to accepted

    The “theme” is mainly just about the colors used for quoted text. It's not an attempt to completely emulate how Apple Mail generates messages.

    These are just my comments on why MailMate is different (might be irrelevant to the ticket itself):

    1. I prefer this because the wrote-string is not part of what is quoted.
    2. It's a 24 hour clock in MailMate.
    3. Ok.
    4. Yes, if the wrote-string is quoted then it makes sense that the following line is also quoted.

    I think most of the above can be emulated by using a different wrote-string:

    defaults write com.freron.MailMate MmReplyWroteString -string '> On %e %b %Y, at %l:%M %p, ${from.name:?${from.name} <${from.address}>:${from.address}} wrote:'

    I'll note this ticket as a request to somehow include the wrote-string in the “themes”. It's a bit tricky though, because at some point I should also look into localizing wrote-strings...

    Also, I'll note that MailMate should quote the blank line if the wrote-string is quoted.

    April 21st, 2018 @ 10:14 AM

  2. benny
    benny

    Ok, the latter was a quick fix for the next update (conditionally quoting the blank line).

    April 21st, 2018 @ 10:15 AM

  3. Adonis
    Adonis

    Hi Benny,

    If the above can already be solved by using that setting I am ok with that as the solution. I just wanted a way to do it and that setting was what I was looking for but did not know it existed. If anything, integrating the wrote string to themes might make things more complicated.

    What would be really nice would be if there is a separate wrote string setting that lets you set wrote string presets built in to Mailmate. So setting something like WroteStringPreset to AppleMail gives what we discussed above including the empty quote line. This would be nice so that the user didnt have to fiddle with the format. If the preset is not set or set blank then the custom wrote string can be specified by the MmReplyWroteString preference.

    April 21st, 2018 @ 12:28 PM

  4. benny
    benny

    After thinking about it, I also wrote down that changing the wrote string should probably be orthogonal to the theming feature.

    April 23rd, 2018 @ 11:53 AM

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