4 ms·

The email protocols are hell. Absolute hell. I don’t think anyone truly groks how it works all the way down either. A big difference is that email has slowly b

The email protocols are hell. Absolute hell. I don’t think anyone truly groks how it works all the way down either. A big difference is that email has slowly been developed over a period of decades, and so a lot of great software (both libs and GUIs) were built on top of it, and “perfected” over the time. Maybe what prevented RSS from reaching the same level of development is that RSS is only composed by “creators”, while email has no target audience.

jon_richards 9y ago
An example: My server sends notification emails to the company automatically. Everyone is using gmail to view their emails. When there is an update about a previous notification, I send an email with the in-reply-to header. Oh wait, gmail doesn't use that. Alright, I'll just make sure that the subject line is exactly the same as the original notification (as gmail says to do). This works for a bit, but if someone hits reply-all, suddenly the subject line for the thread is now "Re: <the original subject>" and my followups no longer thread. I'll just make sure that my followups always have "Re: " in them, so they thread whether or not people have been communicating on the thread. This mostly works, but if the update is a week or two later, gmail just decides they shouldn't thread. This is on top of the fact that emails with similar subject lines occasionally thread together. This gets really annoying when you send automated emails where the subjects are the same except for an identifier of some sort (specifically to prevent threading). And there's no way to give feedback to gmail about this. No way to forcefully thread or de-thread emails. You are just given the choice of gmail's threading or no threading at all.
- iforgotpassword 9y ago
  Just don't use the web front end, access them using your favorite mail client using IMAP. Oh wait, google fucked that up too. Luckily most clients worked around the google bullshit over the years.
- thinkloop 9y ago
  Good points - so federated email works so well because most of us decided to federate to a single server. Something sad about that.
- walshemj 9y ago
  Well you just need to start using a real MUA like outlook or thunderbird and drop gmail
  - andybak 9y ago
    I dropped both of those in favour of Gmail (and now Inbox) years ago much to my delight. What am I missing?
    - vidarh 9y ago
      Proper threading for starters.
    - Macha 9y ago
      Features I've found missing from Gmail: * A decent bulk actions interface. * Threading * Filter on email headers * Apply rules based on message age (e.g. twitch "is now live" messages are irrelevant after 1 day.
- andybak 9y ago
  I very rarely have problems with the threading in Gmail. It seems to handle re: and fwd: correctly nearly all the time. Some automated emails get threaded together when I'd prefer them separately (error notifications and other alerts) but it's minor enough that I've never even looked into whether there's a workaround.
- jimktrains2 9y ago
  I believe Gmail will thread when the message I'd and/or references reference each other. (Otherwise it's hit or miss, like you said.) https://cr.yp.to/immhf/thread.html https://cr.yp.to/immhf/thread.html
- digi_owl 9y ago
  More and more i find myself wondering when it was we allowed Google to take over control of the net...
walshemj 9y ago
:-) RFC822 mail is fairly simple at its heart - X.400 was a lot more detailed
- insertnickname 9y ago
  If you're a new implementor, you'll be shocked at how badly 822 was designed. Extracting even the simplest information from a message---the author's address, for example, or the sending date---is excruciatingly painful. And I see no sign that we'll ever be rid of the horrors of 822 syntax; how can we convince users to convert their old mailboxes to a sensible new format? https://cr.yp.to/immhf.html https://cr.yp.to/immhf.html
  - walshemj 9y ago
    Well as some one who used to work on the UK's x.400 ADMD I would agree. How ever TCP/IP protocols won the standards war which on balance is better - other wise you'd have what your PTT wanted to have sub :-)
- RantyDave 9y ago
  "sendmail gets rather confused by bytes between 128 and 159; it uses them for internal macro handling." https://cr.yp.to/immhf/header.html https://cr.yp.to/immhf/header.html That's got to be a sitter of a security hole for something, right?
  - teddyh 9y ago
    According to the Wayback machine, that page is at least from the year 2000 or older, and the two example mails he gives are both from 1996. I would assume that any bug in sendmail which would have existed back then will be fixed by now.
singingfish 9y ago
Absolute hell is a bit of an understatement ;)
cJ0th 9y ago
> Maybe what prevented RSS from reaching the same level of development is that RSS is only composed by “creators”, while email has no target audience. I blame social media. It's basically their agenda to offer everything within there walled garden. And so it was only natural that FB at some point disabled RSS. Fortunately, wordpress generates RSS per default so many will keep providing rss feeds (without even knowing about it)
brightball 9y ago
Email is still pretty simple. It’s the stuff around email that has appeared for source validating and spam prevention that has complicated it...and really that’s not any one persons fault. Just people trying to solve a hard problem. SPF, DKIM and DMARC seem to be making a real dent here though. DKIM is the most complicated to implement and manage since ideally you want to periodically rotate the keys and it has to be implemented at the sending server level instead of the DNS.

jon_richards 9y ago

An example: My server sends notification emails to the company automatically. Everyone is using gmail to view their emails. When there is an update about a previous notification, I send an email with the in-reply-to header. Oh wait, gmail doesn't use that. Alright, I'll just make sure that the subject line is exactly the same as the original notification (as gmail says to do). This works for a bit, but if someone hits reply-all, suddenly the subject line for the thread is now "Re: <the original subject>" and my followups no longer thread. I'll just make sure that my followups always have "Re: " in them, so they thread whether or not people have been communicating on the thread. This mostly works, but if the update is a week or two later, gmail just decides they shouldn't thread. This is on top of the fact that emails with similar subject lines occasionally thread together. This gets really annoying when you send automated emails where the subjects are the same except for an identifier of some sort (specifically to prevent threading). And there's no way to give feedback to gmail about this. No way to forcefully thread or de-thread emails. You are just given the choice of gmail's threading or no threading at all.

iforgotpassword 9y ago
Just don't use the web front end, access them using your favorite mail client using IMAP. Oh wait, google fucked that up too. Luckily most clients worked around the google bullshit over the years.
thinkloop 9y ago
Good points - so federated email works so well because most of us decided to federate to a single server. Something sad about that.
walshemj 9y ago
Well you just need to start using a real MUA like outlook or thunderbird and drop gmail
- andybak 9y ago
  I dropped both of those in favour of Gmail (and now Inbox) years ago much to my delight. What am I missing?
  - vidarh 9y ago
    Proper threading for starters.
  - Macha 9y ago
    Features I've found missing from Gmail: * A decent bulk actions interface. * Threading * Filter on email headers * Apply rules based on message age (e.g. twitch "is now live" messages are irrelevant after 1 day.
andybak 9y ago
I very rarely have problems with the threading in Gmail. It seems to handle re: and fwd: correctly nearly all the time. Some automated emails get threaded together when I'd prefer them separately (error notifications and other alerts) but it's minor enough that I've never even looked into whether there's a workaround.
jimktrains2 9y ago
I believe Gmail will thread when the message I'd and/or references reference each other. (Otherwise it's hit or miss, like you said.) https://cr.yp.to/immhf/thread.html https://cr.yp.to/immhf/thread.html
digi_owl 9y ago
More and more i find myself wondering when it was we allowed Google to take over control of the net...

walshemj 9y ago

:-) RFC822 mail is fairly simple at its heart - X.400 was a lot more detailed

insertnickname 9y ago
If you're a new implementor, you'll be shocked at how badly 822 was designed. Extracting even the simplest information from a message---the author's address, for example, or the sending date---is excruciatingly painful. And I see no sign that we'll ever be rid of the horrors of 822 syntax; how can we convince users to convert their old mailboxes to a sensible new format? https://cr.yp.to/immhf.html https://cr.yp.to/immhf.html
- walshemj 9y ago
  Well as some one who used to work on the UK's x.400 ADMD I would agree. How ever TCP/IP protocols won the standards war which on balance is better - other wise you'd have what your PTT wanted to have sub :-)
RantyDave 9y ago
"sendmail gets rather confused by bytes between 128 and 159; it uses them for internal macro handling." https://cr.yp.to/immhf/header.html https://cr.yp.to/immhf/header.html That's got to be a sitter of a security hole for something, right?
- teddyh 9y ago
  According to the Wayback machine, that page is at least from the year 2000 or older, and the two example mails he gives are both from 1996. I would assume that any bug in sendmail which would have existed back then will be fixed by now.

singingfish 9y ago

Absolute hell is a bit of an understatement ;)

cJ0th 9y ago

> Maybe what prevented RSS from reaching the same level of development is that RSS is only composed by “creators”, while email has no target audience. I blame social media. It's basically their agenda to offer everything within there walled garden. And so it was only natural that FB at some point disabled RSS. Fortunately, wordpress generates RSS per default so many will keep providing rss feeds (without even knowing about it)

brightball 9y ago

Email is still pretty simple. It’s the stuff around email that has appeared for source validating and spam prevention that has complicated it...and really that’s not any one persons fault. Just people trying to solve a hard problem. SPF, DKIM and DMARC seem to be making a real dent here though. DKIM is the most complicated to implement and manage since ideally you want to periodically rotate the keys and it has to be implemented at the sending server level instead of the DNS.