Date: Tue, 21 Feb 2012 00:59:20 -0500
From: Austin Clements <amdragon@MIT.EDU>
To: Adam Wolfe Gordon <awg+notmuch@xvx.ca>
Subject: Re: [PATCH v5.2 7/7] emacs: Use the new JSON reply format and
	message-cite-original
Message-ID: <20120221055920.GA30513@mit.edu>
References: <1329361957-28493-1-git-send-email-awg+notmuch@xvx.ca>
	<1329361957-28493-8-git-send-email-awg+notmuch@xvx.ca>
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Quoth Adam Wolfe Gordon on Feb 15 at  8:12 pm:
> Use the new JSON reply format to create replies in emacs. Quote HTML
> parts nicely by using mm-display-part to turn them into displayable
> text, then quoting them with message-cite-original. This is very
> useful for users who regularly receive HTML-only email.
> 
> Use message-mode's message-cite-original function to create the
> quoted body for reply messages. In order to make this act like the
> existing notmuch defaults, you will need to set the following in
> your emacs configuration:
> 
> message-citation-line-format "On %a, %d %b %Y, %f wrote:"
> message-citation-line-function 'message-insert-formatted-citation-line

I've been thinking about this more.  message-mode's default citation
line is really unfortunate and quite possibly insane ("writes" isn't
even the right tense and what's up with that extra line break?).  The
option to change this is also well hidden (as an experiment, I tried
navigating to it through customize and couldn't figure out where it
was, even though I knew what I was looking for).  In general, I'm a
fan of inheriting as many options from Emacs as possible, but people
*are* going to ask how to change this and the default setting *is*
going to turn people off of notmuch ("What mail client do you use that
generates those quirky citation lines?"  "I use notmuch!"  "Is that,
like, from the 80's?").

So, what about adding a notmuch customize option for selecting the
citation line format?  It could offer a few const choices, including a
default, sane format, plus the option to enter your own or to fall
back to whatever message-mode is configured to do.  If we do this,
it's probably best done in a follow-up series, but this seemed like an
appropriate place to bring it up.

> The tests have been updated to reflect the (ugly) emacs default.
> ---
>  emacs/notmuch-lib.el |    6 ++
>  emacs/notmuch-mua.el |  127 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++---------------
>  test/emacs           |    8 ++--
>  3 files changed, 100 insertions(+), 41 deletions(-)