The review screen which is displayed after a message is composed contains a lot of empty space and in my opinion unnecessarily uses up space for displaying key bindings, which is something that is not present anywhere else in aerc plus it duplicates the functionality of :help keys.

This empty space plus the space created by the removal of the key hints could instead be used to actually present the message for a proper review in a similar manner that the :preview command invokable from the review screen does.

Where there are now key hints and the empty space of the usually short attachment list, there could instead be an open pager displaying the actual message in the same way that it would be after :preview is invoked. This would make it possible to immediately see the message in full as the recipient will see it (modulo their email client) without the ability to alter it by accident (such as pressing a wrong key in the editor and then saving without noticing). List of attachments would also look the same as for :preview and switching between them would be possible which would also allow for their inspection. In addition, this change would allow for a full inspection of all message headers. At the same time, all operations which are now valid for the compose::review screen would be valid here.

Effectively, this would remove the middle step of dropping to the review screen after editor is closed and invoking :preview (plus the steps of closing the preview and going back to the review screen to send the message).

Several points have been brought up in the discussion. This "improved" review screen should be clearly discernible from a received message viewer. The screen could perhaps include some header or the tab title could indicate that it is a composed message.

A way to simulate this behaviour has also been suggested: a hook could be added which would trigger when the editor exits. The user could use this hook to automatically invoke :preview. For this to fully encompass all of the above it would also have to be ensured that the :send command and others can be invoked on a :previewed message, which is currently not the case.

It has also been mentioned that the attachments list could be displayed while composing below the editor similarly as it is shown below the pager in message viewer. Message editing could then be fully performed from the compose::editor screen including attachments and in addition to the above described changes to the review screen, a configuration option could be added to have the message sent immediately upon successful editor exit (review = true|false).

The original discussion can be found here [1]. Note that the original formulation is rather confusing and does not describe exactly the same behaviour as is described here.

[1] https://lists.sr.ht/~rjarry/aerc-discuss/%3CCYM1H3H7U1OA.78VQA3CI0BQQ%40matfyz.cz%3E