Comment 143 for bug 10883

(In reply to Thomas D. (currently busy elsewhere) from comment #60)
> Please note that (at least after our message
> formatting/Shift-key-for-opposite-format spree, which is about to land), you
> can always hold Shift key to get opposite of the expected/current format
> when going into compositions. E.g., hold Shift while clicking "Edit" on
> draft and you'll end up in the opposite composition mode of what you'd
> normally get. Unfortunately that trick is not discoverable, but for the
> initiated, it might reduce the need for conversion from inside messages
> again.

In actual fact, if that method were mapped to an actual menu item (so it's keyboard-shortcut-able), I would be fine with that. For instance, it doesn't seem that "Control-Shift-R" or "Control-Shift-L" are mapped to anything currently. (On a Mac, s/Control/Command/g.) That would give a consistent behavior if those keyboard shortcuts mapped to the same behavior as shift-clicking currently does. (Since Control-R is already mapped to "Reply" and Control-L is "Forward.")

*Personally,* I don't actually care that much about switching back and forth *while* composing (though the feature should still be implemented!). But I do think it's an absurd regression that you MUST use the mouse to get the alternate composing method.

It seems to me that such a feature would be extremely simple to implement as it would just entail mapping a keyboard shortcut to activate already existing functionality.

For bonus points, the menu bar menu could dynamically change when the Shift key is held down, to replace "Reply" with "Reply With Plain Text" or "Reply With HTML" and replace "Forward" with "Forward As Plain Text" or "Forward As HTML" (according to whether the Account Settings -> Composition -> "Compose messages in HTML format" checkbox is *checked* or *unchecked*, respectively—so in either case the "hold shift" option would show the *alternate* composing method, mirroring the current shift-click functionality).

I don't know how widespread dynamic toggles of menu bar menus are in Linux or Windows applications, but they're quite common in macOS. You can see a simple example on the Apple menu; click it and then toggle the "Option" and "Shift" keys to see how it changes.

For now I will continue using the clicking workaround. I'm not a Javascript guru.