Privatemsg using forum theme?

New features belong to 6.x-2.x-dev.

author_pane integration and different themes would be interesting but before we can do that, we need to create the backend which would allow to provide and choose a theme inside privatemsg.

@Berdir, that is already possible and been available since early dev versions of d6 branch... Unless its been removed in recent commits? There should be a radio box that allow you to chose template. currently only 'default' is/was available, but more can be added easily.

Yeah the feature is there and I haven't changed it. But it is imho not complete (It *only* works for the view template, not for others) and has never been tested I think, atleast not by me.

As for my opinion, having the same template for private messages and forum makes no sense. Even now it's bloody easy to confuse one for the other, and unintentionally publish private information, or hide something intended for public, when replying to the same person in different places on the site. IMO private messages should *not* look like a discussion board, as private mail is a very different thing. I went a long way in my custom theme to achieve that (basically, I had to completely re-theme privatemsg, also to get rid of wasted space in the picture/name columns).

Just a different opinion to complete the mix of opinions here - not intended to stop you from adding more features as long, as they are optional only.

FWIW, I'm the author of AF/AP and I don't have any interest in using them in private messages. The point in #4 is a good one. Plus, I don't think you really need all the extra info that AP gives you when you are talking privately to someone. Presumably, you know them enough to not really need all that. And the default layout of privatemsg is very clean and uncluttered.

Michelle

Don't worry, we won't change the current theme to look like a forum. If we're going to do something in this direction, then we will provide other themes/looks additionally to the current one.

Actually, it does make sense for my use-case to have PM using Author Pane to display information about the user who wrote a message.

Specifically, I have added some custom functionality (basically, links) to AP to expose quick search by the user email in external systems (CRM, Order Processing) for internal Forum Moderators. And then I had to do the same for PM (overriding the template and adding needed variables - the same as for the AP - through the preprocess function). While it is working fine this way - probably there should be some integration the way back - not only PM adding the "Send PM" functionality to AP, but also PM using the AP for message threads.

Thanks
AndyB

This is a discussion of interesting ideas but does not contain a specific, agreed-upon support request. It's also quite old, so I'm closing it. Feel free to re-open a specific issue if you have a feature request.

That's an odd comment... The initial post here is clearly a feature request, not a support request. It doesn't really matter as there's not much point in keeping it open if it's never going to happen, but I thought it was an odd thing to say.