Mail: Allow Mailbody formating [$100 awarded]

[Offerel]

Steps to reproduce

1. Open Mail App
2. Click on Button "New Message"
3. Type some Text in the Textarea for Mailbody

Expected behaviour

There should be a Buttonbar, which let me format the Mail with the most needed Formats like bold, italic, font color, font size, font name. Maybe its possible to add something like tinymce.

Actual behaviour

Currently, its a pure Textarea, only normal Text could be entered.

Mail app

Mail app version: 0.60

*Mailserver or service: Personal IMAP Server *

Server configuration

Operating system: Raspbian (Debian, Jessie)

Web server: Nginx

Database: MariaDB

PHP version: 5.6

Updated from an older version or fresh install: fresh install

Client configuration

Browser: Firefox 50

Operating system: Windows

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The $100 bounty on this issue has been claimed at Bountysource.

[jancborchardt]

We talked about this in the past and even had a pull request for it at https://github.com/owncloudarchive/mail/pull/1536
But we decided that this is a lot of work (and a lot to maintain) for little gain at the moment.

And for the record, like I said in that pull request – when we should ever go forward with this: Interface-wise this unobtrusive bar which appears when marking text would be great: https://yabwe.github.io/medium-editor/demo.html (Also used by pretty popular blogging platform Medium)
Instead of using a permanently-visible big button bar which distracts too much when writing the usual emails with no need of formatting.

[Offerel]

Personally, i like more the button bar, but that's not so problematic. Mainly, i write formatted HTML Mails since years and never looked back. Yes I'm a heavy Outlook User but i think, formatting Mails, should be a Optional thing. Some users like it, some need it and some hate it :-)

[jancborchardt]

@Offerel maybe at some point we will do it, but we have lots of other things higher on the priority list (like better performance, moving mails, maybe threading at some point, and fixing bugs). :)

It would be cool if you can help, for example by reviewing pull requests: https://github.com/nextcloud/mail/pulls – it’s very easy, you just check them out and test if stuff works. :)

[ChristophWurst]

So, I've yet again spent a few hours finding a suitable WYSIWYG editor. Here are some notes to the future me to know which ones I don't have to look into again:

• Trumbowyg looks great, but does not support to be loaded as js module, it simply injects itself to the global jQuery, which we don't use.
• Simditor also looks slick good, but apparently it's unmaintained and I also found some security reports that are probably unaddressed
• Quill looks okay-ish but its design doesn't really fit ours. Moreover, code snippets from the official docs didn't work for this app. The editor bar showed up, but the text was not editable.

Most other libs I've found seem to target a specific framework (mostly React, the some Vue and Angular).

[ChristophWurst]

This is so disappointing. TinyMCE claims to work with webpack, if I use it it doesn't do anything anything. The code is exactly the one from the documentation. If I initialize it via the tinymce global it somehow works, though. ☹️

[ChristophWurst]

As much as I personally would love to have a decent editor, I'm giving in on this. I didn't expect this to be that hard.

[Offerel]

Maybe you can try CKEditor. Personally, i like it more than TinyMCE, since TinyMCE is complicated under some circuumstates. Currently, i use both in my Notes Plugin for Roundcube. The user can switch the editor with a config parameter.

[ChristophWurst]

Spent a few minutes on getting CKEditor to run: failed. Basically, it's quite cumbersome to use it with Webpack at the moment: https://github.com/ckeditor/ckeditor5/issues/139#issuecomment-276876222

[Offerel]

I use CKEditor4. I don't know, if this is better in terms of Webpack.

[ChristophWurst]

Will give it a try another day. There were too many failing attempts today 🙈

[ChristophWurst]

Will give it a try another day. There were too many failing attempts today see_no_evil

Today is the day

[ChristophWurst]

so far, so good

[Offerel]

Ohhh looks like something changes in that topic. I will try it at the weekend.

[ChristophWurst]

it's getting better

[jancborchardt]

Very nice! :) I was gonna say there are a few too many formatting options in the bar but you’re handling it. :+1:

[ChristophWurst]

Some research on plain text vs right/html text toggle

Gmail

Option hidden in menu (they have a lot of other actions/options)

Outlook online/365

Option hidden in menu

and as far as I understood you can set a default in the account settings.

Gnome Evolution

Has a directly visible dropdown

Thunderbird

Has the setting somewhere nobody would ever find it

Kopano

You have to change the account settings. Nothing found in the composer itself

Open-Xchange

The have message options similar to those of Outlook and Gmail

[jancborchardt]

Option hidden in menu (they have a lot of other actions/options)

What about the underlined A formatting options icon next to the "Send" button? Isn’t that there always, and if you use an option then it just switches to rich text automatically?

[ChristophWurst]

What about the underlined A formatting options icon next to the "Send" button? Isn’t that there always, and if you use an option then it just switches to rich text automatically?

the A toggles the editor toolbar. and yes, if automatically switches to rich editing once any rich formatting is used

while form a user's perspective this is nice, I'm afraid it's a lot of work to integrate this magic. we should start with a simple on/off switch in some kind. fancier stuff can follow later.

[jancborchardt]

Just using any option for the first time could switch it on for that mail?

Or: when you click on the formatting icon, the first item in the list could be "Rich text" with a checkbox.
This setting:

• could be a global setting then for any mail you compose.
• could either go back to being unchecked every time.
• or be specific to the type of mail: mails you compose by yourself, and then have separate defaults e.g. replies to plain text mails will always be plaintext initially, or replies to rich text mails will always be rich text too.

For reference also Apple Mail, which is a bit more relevant than Kopano, Open X-Change, Thunderbird and Evolution. (We only need the widely used ones: Google Mail, Apple Mail and Outlook as review. :)

Full description: http://osxdaily.com/2019/03/21/format-emails-mac-mail-format-bar/

[ChristophWurst]

I would

• Add a setting to the user account for the default value
• Let the user toggle the mode for each message individually without changing the account default

Just using any option for the first time could switch it on for that mail?

https://github.com/nextcloud/mail/issues/210#issuecomment-530306859

[jancborchardt]

Seems good. :+1:

And then for the formatting balloon, we should look at the sleek design by Medium:

https://help.medium.com/hc/en-us/articles/215194537-Format-text

[ChristophWurst]

And then for the formatting balloon, we should look at the sleek design by Medium:

That will be your part :v:

[Offerel]

If you think about the general settings (which is a good idea), you should also add a setting for the default font-family and font-size. For example, you can use a dropdown-box with some pre-defined font-familys which are default on the mainstream system. For Windows 10, this would be Calibri and a size of 11(points). Other systems have other font-settings. Only mainstream systems should be pre-defined like Windows 10, Ubuntu/Mint, not minor ones like mac or something else.

[jancborchardt]

@Offerel yep, but let’s start with the basics and get a minimum viable version working. :) Then we can see what else is needed step by step.

[republicus]

I have to respectfully disagree with the position that features everyone expects and are accustomed to in modern day email messaging is a distraction.

I think the focus is misplaced. Being that Nextcloud is targeting enterprise like features (particularly for monetization) Mail, in my opinion, should be paramount in Nextcloud's _app_ development.

How a permanent bar becomes a distraction which includes all the features everyone _expects_ is beyond me.

I find the need to highlight text to learn that there even be formatting availability is a major distraction. I don't want to have to teach people how to email.

Additionally. I find the colored areas a glaring distraction over anything mentioned here: