[MlMt] Signature placement

[Benny Kjær Nielsen]

On 17 Nov 2016, at 14:34, Tom Worster wrote:

> I am baffled by MailMate's behavior wrt signatures. What am I doing 
> wrong?
>
> First, if Preferences:Signatures:Default signature placement is set to 
> "Top" then, when I reply to an email, the signature is inserted at the 
> bottom of the reply, below the quoted text. The behavior is the same 
> if it is set to "Bottom", except that this is [less 
> astonishing](Principle of least astonishment).
>
> I need to top-reply in most of my correspondences because this is what 
> people expect. And I need my signature to be immediately below my 
> reply and above the quoted text. For now, I copy-paste the signature 
> that MailMate inserts at the bottom of the email to the top and then 
> compose my reply.

How it's supposed to work: If you use the “Top”/“Bottom” menu 
items in the Signature menu in the Composer then MailMate should learn 
your habits.

The default in the Signatures preferences pane is only used when 
MailMate cannot derive the location based on previous responses (this 
also includes which signature to use). If you change this setting then 
you should also click “Reset Usage History” in the same window.

If it's any consolation I'll likely make the dynamic signature system 
opt-in at some point. Some users are extremely happy about this feature 
and some are deeply frustrated. You clearly fall in the latter category.

> Second, how do I defeat automatic insertion of a signature?

The dynamic part of it can be disabled by pasting the following in a 
Terminal window:

	defaults write com.freron.MailMate MmDynamicSignatureMethod -string 
"none"

> Third, I use signatures as a convenient way to insert various 
> boilerplate texts.

I cannot really recommend that.

> But when I insert a signature using the composer's toolbar, I always 
> get a warning about discarding HTML. What's this about?

Hmm, I'm not sure why that is triggered. This should only happen if 
editing the plain text variant of HTML embedded content, but apparently 
MailMate tries to do that when inserting the signature...

Ok, I can reproduce that and I've noted it as a bug.

Read more about how MailMate handles plain text here: 
https://manual.mailmate-app.com

> Finally, I don't understand what is the "HTML Variant" or how it 
> works.

Since MailMate uses a plain text composer then HTML cannot be inserted 
directly in the text editor. Instead, the plain text version of the 
signature is inserted (which is needed anyways since all HTML emails 
include a plain text variant as well). If an HTML variant exists for the 
signature then MailMate know that is also need to create an HTML variant 
of the message and within this the HTML variant of the signature is 
used.

> What would suit me is very simple:
>
> 1. An option to not insert a signature by default.

Noted.

> 2. When I insert a signature using the composer's toolbar menu, 
> MailMate inserts it
>     - at my carat, wherever that may be, and

I'll consider that.

>     - simply as a plain-text string. Regardless if I am composing in 
> markdown or not, just insert the characters in the signature string as 
> though I had typed them or copy-pasted them from a text-editor.

Insertion of signatures should not behave differently in Markdown mode.

> Unless I'm doing something wrong, I will need to add something like 
> [Paste](http://pasteapp.me/) to MailMate to transition from Outlook.

In any case, if what you are looking for is some sort of text expansion 
utility then that is likely more suitable and probably also more useful 
in general.

-- 
Benny
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