Reintroduce section sorting to the roomlist

[justjanne]

In Short

This PR allows sorting the room list into sections, similar to the functionality of the old room list.

Until this gets merged, I'll maintain

• a deployment
• docker images
  • v1.12.0 k8r.eu/justjanne/element-web:v1.12.0
  • v1.12.1 k8r.eu/justjanne/element-web:v1.12.1
  • develop k8r.eu/justjanne/element-web:develop
• packages for Ubuntu and Windows (TODO)

Rationale

Many group chat apps section their room list, e.g. Slack with Rooms and DMs, Discord with Rooms and Voice/Video rooms. As I heavily rely on this feature every day, I decided to port it.

Limitations

This will not allow custom sorting methods per section, nor collapsible sections. All it does is change the sorting order to sort certain sections first. I'm planning to add section headers as well, but I haven't fully brainstormed how that'd work yet.

Checklist

• I have read through review guidelines and CONTRIBUTING.md.
• Tests written for new code (and old code if feasible).
• New or updated public/exported symbols have accurate TSDoc documentation.
• Linter and other CI checks pass.
• I have licensed the changes to Element by completing the Contributor License Agreement (CLA)

[andybalaam]

I've been trying this out today and it seems a real improvement. For me to be able to use this instead of my current hack, I'd just need "unread" to mean "unread" i.e. rooms with a dot instead of whatever it means now :-).

[justjanne]

The conclusion of the investigation regarding the unread filter is that we'll stick with the current implementation, which uses the Unread filter of the new room list.

[daniellekirkwood]

Hi Janne! Thanks for the contribution, I'm taking a look into this. Thanks for your patience with me!

[daniellekirkwood]

We're keen to implement sections, this isn't the way we would go about it. If it's ok I'll go head and say 'no' to this contribution but as soon as we have a clear product and design requirement set I'll make those issues public so feedback and contributions can be welcomed. These issues should be available before the end of October 🤞

[justjanne]

I'll try to summarize some of the user needs that drove this PR here:

• User 1: Primarily chats with significant other, is in dozens of rooms with lots of activity they don't care about. Doesn't want to enable/disable filters, just wants to pin their significant other to the top (which they can in WhatsApp)
• User 2: Leaves rooms unread if they need to react, so wants to have unread rooms at the top of the list, even if other (read) rooms have newer activity
• User 3: Wants to be able to mute rooms, so they end up at the bottom of the list and new activity doesn't push them to the top

Please add your own use case and needs, if it hasn't been mentioned yet!

[justjanne]

I've rebuilt this PR with the section code now being a postprocessor for the room list store, which also allows us to have section headers.

[MidhunSureshR]

Closing based on #30887 (comment).

[justjanne]

@MidhunSureshR As mentioned above, I've rewritten the PR entirely earlier today to take the comments and reviews into account.

This PR is for sure not perfect at this point in time, but I'd like to at least have a constructive discussion about it.

[MidhunSureshR]

I'm not sure why you would rewrite the PR even after comment from product. Whatever solution we end up with, it's going to come from the design/ux team and this is obviously not that.

[justjanne]

I'm not sure why you would rewrite the PR even after comment from product. Whatever solution we end up with, it's going to come from the design/ux team and this is obviously not that.

Because I was talking to some of those people to try to align this PR more closely with their vision?

Because right now some users are actively using my builds of this PR, and I care about improving their experience?

[florianduros]

@justjanne Thank you for your contribution and maintaining this build until product and design come back with a solution before the end of october

[langleyd]

+1 Thanks for your constructive contributions @justjanne . There is a public issue here we can use for discussion of the subsequent implementation.