Strange behaviour on replying messages with selected text

[Fábio mendes]

When I reply a message with some text selected, evolution copies only the
selected text on the replied message. Is it a bug or a feature? I can see this
can be useful but it took some time to figure out the behaviour, so it would be
nice to warn the user on the 1st time she replies a message with some text
selected. Something in the lines:

"""

Do you want to reply the whole message or just the selected text?

  [*] Whole message
  [ ] Selected text

[X] Remember this configuration

""""

[Matt Zimmerman (mdz)]

Sounds suspiciously like a feature; assigning to Sebastien to confirm

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

yes, that's a feature. If you select nothing it includes the whole message, if
you select a part of the message it only includes this part.

I don't think asking a question each time would be a good idea, the current
behaviour seems to be right, I'm closing it as notabug. Feel free to reopen if
you disagree

[Fábio mendes (fabiomendes-myrealbox)]

Yes, probably asking annoying popup questions is a bigger usability problem than
the current behaviour. I just don't think the current one is The Right Way (tm),
since until you figure it out, the program seems broken, but that's not a show
stopper. So I'm off, I have no better solution and evo developers have much
better issues to spare their time on, so I'll confirm the NOTABUG and close it.

Thanks,
Fabio

[Sami Pesonen (sampeson)]

About this I think it is misfeature. For new users it is not logical and can create situation where does not know where did the text go.

I have seen experienced users also trouble with this, e.g.:
 1. reading email and highlighting part of email to show something interesting for colleague
 2. press reply
 3. notice that email is not fully there in reply
 4. close email and try to get the original text not highlighted
 5. reply again to notice there were still one space chosen...
 6. close email and choose ALL text to make sure text is in reply and click reply button

Also I cannot find this in Evolution documentation and no possibility to turn it off. I think the original dialog proposal is good so worth to rethink that one (or add it to email composer preferences).

[James Hunt (jamesodhunt)]

I agree - this behaviour is counter-intuitive: why would you only want to reply to a mail quoting *some* of the original text? It is more normal to highlight *some* of the original text within the context of the *entirity* of the original message.

This behaviour should be settable in Evolutions preferences, but disabled by default. The default behaviour is only useful for a small subset of "power users" who are perfectly able to trawl through settings to tweak applications to their unusual needs. New users don't like applications to behave in ways that surprise them. Dare I say Outlook doesn't behave like this...