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Feature request: From field selection maps

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barry

26 Jul, 2017 02:32 PM

I'm loving GPGTools and have donated to the cause! One of the things I'm missing from my Claws-Mail setup is customizable From field selection based on recipient headers (e.g. To and CC). I'm on a lot of mailing lists, and I generally tailor my From field on replies depending on the list I'm reply to. E.g. for Python mailing lists, I'd use my python dot org address and for Mailman mailing lists I'd use my list dot org address. (Let's not even get into the fact that Mail.app doesn't have a proper reply-to-list function!)

This becomes more important with GPGTools because not only do I have a dozen or so emails associated with my account, but GPGTools doubles this since I have two keys registered, so in the From popup menu, I see each address listed twice, once with each key.

When someone emails me directly, Mail.app usually picks the correct From header. It'll first pick the From that matched the To, and then I think GPGTools picks my default key. But for mailing lists where I'm implicitly addressed, Mail.app doesn't have the necessary information to pick the right From.

In my Claws setup, I have a small Python extension which looks at the recipient headers and determines which email to use. Sometimes it uses the full To/CC header, and other times it uses just the domain or just the localpart. Because it's Python it's pretty flexible, but I think you could accomplish a lot with just a little bit of UI.

Maybe this is outside the goals of GPGTools, but since you're already so darn awesome, I figured I'd make the request. :)

1. Support Staff 1 Posted by Steve on 17 Aug, 2017 08:06 PM

   

   Hi Barry,

   since you are on macOS, you may probably want to look into a feature that apple just introduced with 10.12. Open Mail.app > Preferences > Composing.

   There is an option called "Send new messages from:" and in your case you would want to set that to "Automatically select best account".

   That option selects the From: account you used in previous messages to the same recipient. I currently am not sure, why this setting would not work as expected when writing to a mailing list.

   Could you give this a spin and see if it does what you need?

   All the best,
   steve

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2. 2 Posted by barry on 26 Aug, 2017 05:14 PM

   

   Hi Steve,

   Yes, indeed I have always set “Automatically select best account” and that seems to work most of the time. Of course, Mail.app doesn’t have a reply-to-list feature so it almost never selects the right address for replies to mailing lists, but I’ve learned to deal with that. The reason is that a proper reply to a mailing list should not CC the original author, otherwise they’d get duplicates. So it can’t know that I’m subscribed to List A with barry@A.com and List B with barry@B.com. In Claws, I have a small extension (written in Python) that essentially regex matches the To header to select the correct From header from a predefined criteria.

   The other problem is that I have two keys associated with most of my email addresses. My older 1024 bit DSA key, and my newer 4096 RSA key. These days I’m always using the latter, but sometimes the former gets chosen (and both always show up in the From pulldown, which just clutters things up). I’d like to hide the 1024 bit keys if possible.

   Cheers,
   -Barry

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3. Support Staff 3 Posted by Steve on 11 Sep, 2017 02:32 PM

   

   Hi Barry,

   the second problem should be solved in the nightly build: latest GPG Suite nightly build. That page also has sig and SHA256 to verify the download.

   Regarding the reply to issue with mailing lists: would that be a feature request to Apple, as to how Mail.app handles replies to mailing lists? Or how do you think, GPGMail would play into this?

   All the best,
   steve

   Disclaimer: This is a development version which has not been thoroughly tested yet - bugs or crashes are to be expected. Thanks for helping us test.

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4. 4 Posted by barry on 12 Sep, 2017 12:12 AM

   

   Hi Steve, I’ve downloaded and installed the latest nightly. Is there a changelog available? Or, can you describe how the nightly addresses my second issue?

   So I think “reply-to-list” might indeed be an Apple request, but the ability to select a reply address based on the headers (e.g. List-ID, From, or CC) might be a GPGMail feature ask, since reply-to-list would only select the To: header, not the From: header.

   Cheers,
   -Barry

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5. Support Staff 5 Posted by Steve on 12 Sep, 2017 08:49 AM

   

   Yeah, I think I understand what you are asking for. But Setting From or To stuff is Mail.apps domain. We don't touch that.

   The bug you were seeing regarding key selection was a known issue with 2017.1b3. It's listed as first Known issue in the changelog for the beta channel: https://gpgtools.org/releases/gpgsuite/2017.1b3/pre-release-notes.html

   The commit fixing the problem is here: https://github.com/GPGTools/GPGMail/commit/c1f2cbd4d412b82329ccc053...

   Have a great day,
   steve

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6. 6 Posted by barry on 14 Sep, 2017 08:22 PM

   

   Thanks Steve, I see what you're saying about the From field.

   While readingg the release notes (thanks for that link!) I noticed an item
   about GPGTools and Mail ActOn working together again. You know, I'd totally
   forgotten about Mail ActOn which I used to use. I'm thinking that maybe
   it'll handle that part of the job. Anyway I'm going to try it out, so it's
   great to know that the two products work well together.

   Again, thanks for everything.

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7. Support Staff 7 Posted by Steve on 18 Sep, 2017 02:43 PM

   

   Feel free to share any findings if you manage to solve your request via Mail ActOn.

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8. Steve closed this discussion on 16 Feb, 2018 02:32 PM.