How about adding a "reply by email" function to subscriptions?

A user receiving an email through Subscriptions could simply reply to the email and have their message appear as a comment on the original node.

Is this a stretch too far for this module?

Comments

dziemecki’s picture

dziemecki commented

Well, the good news is that it's doable. The mailhandler module actually pretty much handles this:
http://drupal.org/project/mailhandler

The bad news is that it requires setting up a mailserver and IMAP handling on one's Drupal server to enable it, which turns it into a bit of a project.

More good news is that, since the base functionality is already in place, I may not have to do much to integrate with it. I may not even need to test it, if it's simple enough. Maybe someone out there running mailhandler can pipe up and offer some insight.

I'll put it somewhere on the roadmap to be considered.
C-Watootsi’s picture

C-Watootsi commented

Cool,

Mailhandler, despite it's general wonderfulness, can be rather scary for the accidental techie.

By now, we've all seen what Zack Rosen et al are doing with MagicGroups so perhaps some of the effortlessness of that system could rub off to other content types too.

Some kind of filter to remove the original notification text would be desirable too.

dziemecki’s picture

dziemecki commented

Scariness aside (even for the less-than-accidental techie), it is no trivial task to merge SMTP and and HTTP. Drupal doesn't come with an inbox, so it's not going to get much easier than this.

C-Watootsi’s picture

C-Watootsi commented

Aye, too true. Let's see how it pans out, if there's wider interest in this etc.

whereisian’s picture

whereisian commented
Version: 4.6.x-1.x-dev » 4.7.x-1.x-dev

I'm looking for this type of functionality. I require a portable setup, heavy external dependancies aren't really viable. This with Mailhandler makes a decent poorman's listserv.

rseiser’s picture

rseiser commented
Status: Active » Postponed

Sorry to interject my "opinion" here.
It seems a little too difficult to add this feature to serve everybody. First of all, it is only useful for e-mails which contain the teaser, otherwise you don't even know the message you want to respond to. Even if you read the teaser, you might miss something underneath, so you have to go to the website anyways. Once there, why not used the proper "preview" and "submit" functions to make sure your answer is formatted properly.
If your answer is sent by e-mail, then Drupal has quite some hurdles to overcome to post it properly into the right location. First, it has to browse the header to know what comment you are replying too and who you are. And if you have permission. What if your subject line gets a little mangeled up by replying.
Next, it has to remove the original post underneath your e-mail, or your e-mail footer. Otherwise, you get junk posted on the blog which you don't want.

That said, I thought of just including a link to reply, e.g. website/comment/reply/$node/$comment. At least it saves me one click, since I don't have to go to read the forum first and then press "reply". The link would open the reply form and would even show the complete comment above that I am replying to.
Still not perfect practice. What if someone has already posted more information in the meantime? I face the risk of posting something redundant and will look like a fool for not reading all current posts. So that reply method should definitely not be used after being several hours old.

C-Watootsi’s picture

C-Watootsi commented

You're right. Probably better to throw support behind the og2list module, which handles all the issues you discuss.

bdragon’s picture

bdragon commented
Status: Postponed » Closed (fixed)

I believe this is waaay outside the scope of subscriptions...