6 ms·

This is a bad thing. Gmail needs to be e-mail and nothing more or this is EEE.

by nilved 10y ago

matt4077 10y ago
Why can email not evolve? Structured data in markup works well on the web. It's open and could be implemented by any client.
- zlynx 10y ago
  It's only ever going to work for gmail users. For people who read their email in text-only clients this will never do anything. You know, people who use serious email, not to send pictures of balloons and 96-pt Happy Birthday in pink on purple text.
  - groby_b 10y ago
    That of course assumes that "serious" e-mail happens only in text-only clients. Meanwhile, my work e-mail account is fairly busy, pretty much all HTML, and I haven't seen balloons, 96-pt text, or purple background. (I do occasionally send pink text, though. I'm that person) And all of these markup items are highly welcome. I'd rather live in the 21st century. (Although I would kill for procmail, but we can't win them all)
  - icebraining 10y ago
    It's only ever going to work for gmail users. For people who read their email in text-only clients this will never do anything. Why not? If anything, this should been a boon for us text-only client users, since the metadata is structured in a format that can be easily parsed and displayed in an appropriate way, instead of having to deal with HTML conversions. Having a key shortcut on Alpine to activate the main email action, instead of having to cycle over the various links, sounds great to me.
    - simias 10y ago
      I completely agree. Having a more semantic structure rather than "anything goes" HTML can only be a good thing for the state of emailing in 2016. Many high profile websites don't even bother sending a text/plain alternative with their emails anymore and the HTML is often cryptic when viewed from a text browser. Anything that can improve this is a good thing. I do have a minor beef with this implementation however: at first I assumed that this metadata would be stored in custom email header (X-Mail-Action or whatever) but as far as I understand it's embedded in the HTML instead. It would make it more painful to add support for that to existing clients, especially if they use external tools to display HTML.
  - matt4077 10y ago
    It's great to see that there aren't just "serious" notebook users ("this may be great for digital artists, or journalists or teachers but I'm a /serious/ professional and that's why I hate Apple"). Now there's "Serious" email, and if you don't read your email on the cli, you're just an amateur easily impressed by shiny toys. Can't make this stuff up... Or, you know, that structured data and semantic markup are excellent for any number of "advanced" uses.
- beefsack 10y ago
  It's only "open" in that they detail the spec they've come up with. Email has been so useful and resilient only because it's an open standard which is broadly agreed on and adopted. Once the big players start adding custom features on top of existing protocols we start seeing fragmentation and parts of the market being cornered off. Once people start depending on this custom functionality, the vendor usually starts raising the walls to lock people in (see GTalk -> Hangouts.)
  - icebraining 10y ago
    It's only "open" in that they detail the spec they've come up with. The spec is schema.org, which is a format defined by multiple parties, not just Google: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schema.org https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schema.org And it's encoded using JSON-LD, which is also not a Google creation, and it's standardized by the W3C.
    - zappo2938 10y ago
      Yes, Google has a handful of schema.org schemas for rich snippets, structured data.[0] It's like Google's approach is to help you help them make nice search results to help you. It is definitely not some sort of proprietary thing using standardized structured data snippets. [0]: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/guides/intro-structured-data https://developers.google.com/search/docs/guides/intro-struc...
  - erikpukinskis 10y ago
    You're talking about some kind of neoliberal openness, where open means "the big players agreed to it and it conforms to political ideas about structure". That's not my definition of open. My definition open is you can access the spec for free without limitation, and use, modify, and redistribute it as you see fit. If I am feeling grandiose I will concede that openness requires not just access, but easy access and usability by all stakeholders. That's a little radical, but the point is just that there's a degree of accessibility implied in the above. If you have to crawl through a snake pit to get the source perhaps that's not really open. But your definition, which requires buy-in from Oracle and PepsiCo in order to be "open"... I think I reject that definition.
jnpatel 10y ago
Sorry, what's EEE?
- ChrisClark 10y ago
  I think he means Embrace, Extend, Extinguish.
  - qznc 10y ago
    Then please extinguish email, Google. I would guess that something better would take its place. The only danger is that some proprietary service sucks it all up.
    - imcrs 10y ago
      proprietary service... Google?
    - marssaxman 10y ago
      What, you mean some proprietary service like Gmail?
      - matt4077 10y ago
        No, proprietary service like Facebook messenger You know, incompatible with anything else, with not even API access, no third party clients and Facebook as the ultimate arbitrator of your ability to reach anyone (including your customers).
    - brokenmachine 10y ago
      Anyone remember Google Wave?
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
amelius 10y ago
I totally agree. Besides, what is wrong with HTML? And why doesn't it render properly in the gmail client?
- icebraining 10y ago
  HTML is semantically poor, so if they implemented this features in it, they'd have to use stuff like Google-specific links for the actions. This way they can use a more data-friendly format created and supported by multiple organizations (Schema.org), which any client can use freely. As a non-Gmail user myself, I'm quite happy with their choice, since it means I can make it work with my client and my calendaring software.
- andrewguenther 10y ago
  Ironically, they did it to make it easier for other vendors to support. (Some) HTML renders just fine in Gmail, but not other clients.

This is a bad thing. Gmail needs to be e-mail and nothing more or this is EEE.

by nilved 10y ago

This is a bad thing. Gmail needs to be e-mail and nothing more or this is EEE.

Why can email not evolve? Structured data in markup works well on the web. It's open and could be implemented by any client.

zlynx 10y ago
It's only ever going to work for gmail users. For people who read their email in text-only clients this will never do anything. You know, people who use serious email, not to send pictures of balloons and 96-pt Happy Birthday in pink on purple text.
- groby_b 10y ago
  That of course assumes that "serious" e-mail happens only in text-only clients. Meanwhile, my work e-mail account is fairly busy, pretty much all HTML, and I haven't seen balloons, 96-pt text, or purple background. (I do occasionally send pink text, though. I'm that person) And all of these markup items are highly welcome. I'd rather live in the 21st century. (Although I would kill for procmail, but we can't win them all)
- icebraining 10y ago
  It's only ever going to work for gmail users. For people who read their email in text-only clients this will never do anything. Why not? If anything, this should been a boon for us text-only client users, since the metadata is structured in a format that can be easily parsed and displayed in an appropriate way, instead of having to deal with HTML conversions. Having a key shortcut on Alpine to activate the main email action, instead of having to cycle over the various links, sounds great to me.
  - simias 10y ago
    I completely agree. Having a more semantic structure rather than "anything goes" HTML can only be a good thing for the state of emailing in 2016. Many high profile websites don't even bother sending a text/plain alternative with their emails anymore and the HTML is often cryptic when viewed from a text browser. Anything that can improve this is a good thing. I do have a minor beef with this implementation however: at first I assumed that this metadata would be stored in custom email header (X-Mail-Action or whatever) but as far as I understand it's embedded in the HTML instead. It would make it more painful to add support for that to existing clients, especially if they use external tools to display HTML.
- matt4077 10y ago
  It's great to see that there aren't just "serious" notebook users ("this may be great for digital artists, or journalists or teachers but I'm a /serious/ professional and that's why I hate Apple"). Now there's "Serious" email, and if you don't read your email on the cli, you're just an amateur easily impressed by shiny toys. Can't make this stuff up... Or, you know, that structured data and semantic markup are excellent for any number of "advanced" uses.
beefsack 10y ago
It's only "open" in that they detail the spec they've come up with. Email has been so useful and resilient only because it's an open standard which is broadly agreed on and adopted. Once the big players start adding custom features on top of existing protocols we start seeing fragmentation and parts of the market being cornered off. Once people start depending on this custom functionality, the vendor usually starts raising the walls to lock people in (see GTalk -> Hangouts.)
- icebraining 10y ago
  It's only "open" in that they detail the spec they've come up with. The spec is schema.org, which is a format defined by multiple parties, not just Google: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schema.org https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schema.org And it's encoded using JSON-LD, which is also not a Google creation, and it's standardized by the W3C.
  - zappo2938 10y ago
    Yes, Google has a handful of schema.org schemas for rich snippets, structured data.[0] It's like Google's approach is to help you help them make nice search results to help you. It is definitely not some sort of proprietary thing using standardized structured data snippets. [0]: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/guides/intro-structured-data https://developers.google.com/search/docs/guides/intro-struc...
- erikpukinskis 10y ago
  You're talking about some kind of neoliberal openness, where open means "the big players agreed to it and it conforms to political ideas about structure". That's not my definition of open. My definition open is you can access the spec for free without limitation, and use, modify, and redistribute it as you see fit. If I am feeling grandiose I will concede that openness requires not just access, but easy access and usability by all stakeholders. That's a little radical, but the point is just that there's a degree of accessibility implied in the above. If you have to crawl through a snake pit to get the source perhaps that's not really open. But your definition, which requires buy-in from Oracle and PepsiCo in order to be "open"... I think I reject that definition.

jnpatel 10y ago

Sorry, what's EEE?

ChrisClark 10y ago
I think he means Embrace, Extend, Extinguish.
- qznc 10y ago
  Then please extinguish email, Google. I would guess that something better would take its place. The only danger is that some proprietary service sucks it all up.
  - imcrs 10y ago
    proprietary service... Google?
  - marssaxman 10y ago
    What, you mean some proprietary service like Gmail?
    - matt4077 10y ago
      No, proprietary service like Facebook messenger You know, incompatible with anything else, with not even API access, no third party clients and Facebook as the ultimate arbitrator of your ability to reach anyone (including your customers).
  - brokenmachine 10y ago
    Anyone remember Google Wave?

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

amelius 10y ago

I totally agree. Besides, what is wrong with HTML? And why doesn't it render properly in the gmail client?

icebraining 10y ago
HTML is semantically poor, so if they implemented this features in it, they'd have to use stuff like Google-specific links for the actions. This way they can use a more data-friendly format created and supported by multiple organizations (Schema.org), which any client can use freely. As a non-Gmail user myself, I'm quite happy with their choice, since it means I can make it work with my client and my calendaring software.
andrewguenther 10y ago
Ironically, they did it to make it easier for other vendors to support. (Some) HTML renders just fine in Gmail, but not other clients.