Show the conversation sequence more accurately in a conversation view
Feature summary
Often conversations are developed in a non-linear manner and branch out as participants don't always reply to the newest message. Following this order can be confusing at times, so I propose that the conversation flow is more accurately displayed.
How would you like it to work?
My idea would be to implement this without having to add extra widgets, which could complicate the code and add clutter to the view. One way to do this would be by applying a specific appearance to message headers from different conversation branches. Two possible options for this would be:
- highlight the message headers of messages which form part of the current conversation branch
- grey out the message headers of messages which do not form part of the current conversation branch The problem I see with the nption 2, is that maybe the user won't be able to interact with greyed-out message headers.
Relevant links, screenshots, etc
Below I have sketched how this could look. In this example a conversation with 4 participants and 5 messages is shown. The conversation evolves as follows:
- Message 1: Red writes a message to all the others.
- Message 2: Blue replies to message 1.
- Message 3: Green also replies to message 1 (skips message 2).
- Message 4: Orange replies to message 2 (skips message 3).
- Message 5: Red replies to message 3 (skips message 4).
Now, you are following the conversation through Geary, and depending on which branch the message you are reading belongs to, the other branch-relevant messages are clearly pointed out in the GUI.