Colours of attributions

Jaimie

I've not used a colourised quotes display before, and I'm finding myself confused because that the person who's writing is in a different colour to their text. It would be clearer to me if the "Whoever wrote" line was the same colour as the text they wrote, rather than being the next level up's colour. So here,

Jack Bohn's name is in black but he's written the blue text
Hamish's name is blue but he wrote the green text
Lynn's name in green but he wrote the red text

I don't know if what I'm asking for is even possible, since recognising an attribution line reliably is Hard. Being used to black only I'm finding the colours actively misleading :/

Snit

Jaimie

I see your point -- but I have never seen any client do it "right". Happy to see the different colors, myself. AND they are seen not just when reading but when replying, which is not always the case.

Andre

I just removed my reply saying you were wrong, because you are right 😀
I'll try to make it right in the next update..

Jaimie

I've been pondering this, and I'm not finding a reliable hueristic for getting the colours matched. I seem to have been right when I said identifying attibution lines reliably is Hard for an algorithm. Maybe even HARD.

Snit

Jaimie

And given how people snip not really possible to do reliably.

Andre

I've been spending some time on this one, but believe it or not there is no news client out there that is doing it correctly.

Example: I write the following message:

Hello my name is Andre

Then any quoted reply from any news client look like this:

On date, "Andre" <email> wrote:
> Hello my name is Andre

But is should be:

> On date, "Andre" <email> wrote:
> Hello my name is Andre

🙁

Snit

Andre

Maybe it is because I am used to it, but I see the indented items being like a quotation mark start and end... so the person who is being quoted does not get indented.

I do not think you will be able to get colors to match people -- even if you did in many cases there would be a significant number of exceptions where people snip content, including attributions. Then your colors would be wrong... and if you are used to them often being right this leads to confusion.

In short: given how you cannot be right even almost always, I think it is bad to try to be "right" but then fail many times and thus cause confusion.

Alan_B

I’m quite happy with monochrome as long as the vertical lines and indentation match up with the actual thread tree. Use of colours is just window dressing as far as I’m concerned. Sorry if that offends anyone!

Snit

Alan_B

To me I really like the colors... I just know not to trust the color to match the name of the person.

Snit

I will add to that -- not only do I like the colors, I like that they are there not just in reading but also replying. To me that is something I very much miss on clients which do not have it. I would not want you to take that option away!

Alan_B

Nobody, not even me, is suggesting the colours be taken away. Personally there are not important to me but of course I can live with them. I’m not going to throw a tantrum over it.

Jaimie

I have been attempting to algorithmise and continue to fail, so I rescind my request entirely! 😄