4 ms·

I'm kinda curious which client makes writing plain text emails hard though.

xena 5y ago
Article author here. Gmail and Apple Mail (macOS/iOS/iPadOS). I had to install aerc on a server to subscribe and post to the list.
- seniorgarcia 5y ago
  I don't post to this specific list, so there might be weird issues I'm not aware of but... Gmail has the plain text option behind the 3dot menu in the bottom right corner. Apple Mail deserves to die a fiery death and I refuse to support it but "Format" -> "Make plain text" *may* send a plain text message, or not depending on the OS X lottery. You can force Apple Mail with "Preferences" -> "Composing" -> "Message Format" -> "Plain Text" to compose plain text messages. Or you can use an actual mail client.
  - xena 5y ago
    > Or you can use an actual mail client. For those of you wanting an explanation of what I meant here, this is a perfect example of it. I do actually have aerc installed now. I just think it's annoying that I had to change my perfectly good workflow that is enough to get me hired at large companies for this. > (this is NOT an invitation to get plaintext email mansplained to me, doing so will get you blocked)
    - seniorgarcia 5y ago
      Was my comment mansplaining? I'm genuinely curious. Apple Mail sucks and I'm always shocked how many people think it's "good enough". All the Apple apps are barely functional but fall short when it comes to replace groupware (or actual standard compliant clients. Don't even get me started what Apple Contacts does to vCard). >>I just think it's annoying that I had to change my perfectly good workflow that is enough to get me hired at large companies for this. I don't get what workflow you are talking about.
      - zerocrates 5y ago
        The translation/context of the passage in the article was "look, I know how to send plaintext email, I just wish I didn't have to jump through these hoops, so please don't come and try to teach me how to do it" and that is kind of what your comment does.
        seniorgarcia 5y ago
        Which is why I asked what the issue was and the author replied he/she was using Gmail/Apple Mail. I can see using the lkml with Apple Mail being difficult since Apple Mail sucks but sending plain text mails with Gmail should just work and nobody should have to change their email client if they are fine with using Gmail. Even not using lkml, it's a standard conforming mailing list that (presumably) will accept any plain text mail just fine and I do not see why anybody would need to install a separate email client like aerc just to use this mailing list. So, to me it read "I know how plaintext emails work but for some reason my workflow does not work so I changed it to include something else" and I was curious as to why... Curse me for asking? Curse me for damning Apple Mail? Idk... I guess curse me for being curious and trying to help a fellow nerd out while shitting on Apple Mail at the same time.
        kelnos 5y ago
        This might be out of date, but IIRC GMail, in plain text mode, will break lines at 72 or 80 characters or something like that, which will mangle inline patches. LKML's policy prefers (requires?) that you send patches inline and not as attachments.
        seniorgarcia 5y ago
        Which is pretty interesting. Apparently Outlook mangles inline patches for the lkml as well to the point that they are unusable and that would have been an interesting talking point in and of itself. But apparently talking about this is not in scope of this post and trying to piece together the issues just gets you downvoted so... Thanks for your advice, I was not aware that Gmail clobbers plain text mails, I guess there is more to it then getting your mail client to send plain text email. Maybe some explanation of the subject would have been nice.
  - kelnos 5y ago
    > Or you can use an actual mail client. An "actual mail client" is any mail client that speaks SMTP. This "use a real X" or "real programmers always do X this way" stuff is why many tech communities are considered hostile and toxic, especially to newcomers. It's childish in personal settings and unprofessional in work settings. The funny thing is that most of the people who continue to hold these attitudes weren't even around or on the internet when it was slow and expensive to sling around rich text or binaries. I mean, I was born in the 80s and got an account with my local ISP in the early 90s, after spending a few years hanging out on BBSes playing door games (anyone remember Virtual Sysop?). I agree that binaries or anything other than plain text was a pain to deal with back then; I had a 2400 baud modem, and even when I managed to get something faster, the phone lines in my area were too noisy to give me anything faster than 19.2kbps. And I'm not some greybeard either; I wasn't around when 300 baud was state-of-the-art. But we've moved on from that time. It feels like the height of arrogance and gatekeeping to look down on someone who just wants to be able to italicize or bold some text in their emails sometimes.
    - a-dub 5y ago
      > But we've moved on from that time. It feels like the height of arrogance and gatekeeping to look down on someone who just wants to be able to italicize or bold some text in their emails sometimes. does rich email formatting still make a mess on mailing lists? most clients send a plaintext part, sure, but is it well formatted? i think it's okay for a team to have customs, and even engage in a little gatekeeping. it's not that much to ask considering how much effort goes in from long time contributors. last i heard github was adding features to actually make it harder to submit drive by PRs because exhausted maintainers were finding themselves further exhausted by uninvested contributors making superfluous contributions. (for events or name recognition or whatever) that said, disrespect is never a good thing.
      - comex 5y ago
        > last i heard github was adding features to actually make it harder to submit drive by PRs because exhausted maintainers were finding themselves further exhausted by uninvested contributors making superfluous contributions. Which features?
  - calvin_ 5y ago
    I use a client that does make it easy, but I shouldn't have to worry about this. Mailing lists are basically full of people who use email in an exceedingly specific way no one outside of mailing list enthuiasts do anymore. I use a graphical email client, as do my coworkers, as do our customers. We don't care about top vs. bottom replies, plain text vs. email, etc. - those who do have lost touch with the average email user.
  - ecf 5y ago
    Be careful. Writing out steps to send email in the way the maintainers of the Linux kernel desire might be deemed as manspaining. You wouldn’t want to get blocked, would you?
    - tfehring 5y ago
      The author already explained upthread that she knows how to do that and has a working setup to do so. But that process is onerous because LKML’s workflow is technologically backwards. (That’s my claim, not hers.) Assuming that someone with that kind of technical chops is too incompetent to Google “plain text gmail” is pretty disrespectful.
- amluto 5y ago
  Hmm. I usually have no problem sending to lkml using iOS’s mail app. Gmail also works if I tell it to format as plain text, but the editor is all kinds of buggy in plain text mode. FWIW, I don’t subscribe to lkml. Instead I point thunderbird at lore.kernel.org’s NNTP feed for the rare occasions in which I need to reply to an on-list message. To the extent that the list’s rules make it hard to get feedback, I consider this a problem. The whole mailing list is in the middle or a giant migration, and I’ll see if I can convince the new overlords to be less strict. (I usually get Linux email directed to me via MAINTAINERS, so this issue doesn’t affect me personally too much. The x86 alias isn’t part of vger and does not have the text hangup, at least to my knowledge.)
- mlindner 5y ago
  Apple Mail has a drop down menu to convert the mail to plaintext. Format-->Make Plain Text, it's even got a hotkey CMD+SHIFT+T. You can even default it to be in plain text under Composing settings in the Preferences.

xena 5y ago

Article author here. Gmail and Apple Mail (macOS/iOS/iPadOS). I had to install aerc on a server to subscribe and post to the list.

seniorgarcia 5y ago
I don't post to this specific list, so there might be weird issues I'm not aware of but... Gmail has the plain text option behind the 3dot menu in the bottom right corner. Apple Mail deserves to die a fiery death and I refuse to support it but "Format" -> "Make plain text" *may* send a plain text message, or not depending on the OS X lottery. You can force Apple Mail with "Preferences" -> "Composing" -> "Message Format" -> "Plain Text" to compose plain text messages. Or you can use an actual mail client.
- xena 5y ago
  > Or you can use an actual mail client. For those of you wanting an explanation of what I meant here, this is a perfect example of it. I do actually have aerc installed now. I just think it's annoying that I had to change my perfectly good workflow that is enough to get me hired at large companies for this. > (this is NOT an invitation to get plaintext email mansplained to me, doing so will get you blocked)
  - seniorgarcia 5y ago
    Was my comment mansplaining? I'm genuinely curious. Apple Mail sucks and I'm always shocked how many people think it's "good enough". All the Apple apps are barely functional but fall short when it comes to replace groupware (or actual standard compliant clients. Don't even get me started what Apple Contacts does to vCard). >>I just think it's annoying that I had to change my perfectly good workflow that is enough to get me hired at large companies for this. I don't get what workflow you are talking about.
    - zerocrates 5y ago
      The translation/context of the passage in the article was "look, I know how to send plaintext email, I just wish I didn't have to jump through these hoops, so please don't come and try to teach me how to do it" and that is kind of what your comment does.
      - seniorgarcia 5y ago
        Which is why I asked what the issue was and the author replied he/she was using Gmail/Apple Mail. I can see using the lkml with Apple Mail being difficult since Apple Mail sucks but sending plain text mails with Gmail should just work and nobody should have to change their email client if they are fine with using Gmail. Even not using lkml, it's a standard conforming mailing list that (presumably) will accept any plain text mail just fine and I do not see why anybody would need to install a separate email client like aerc just to use this mailing list. So, to me it read "I know how plaintext emails work but for some reason my workflow does not work so I changed it to include something else" and I was curious as to why... Curse me for asking? Curse me for damning Apple Mail? Idk... I guess curse me for being curious and trying to help a fellow nerd out while shitting on Apple Mail at the same time.
        kelnos 5y ago
        This might be out of date, but IIRC GMail, in plain text mode, will break lines at 72 or 80 characters or something like that, which will mangle inline patches. LKML's policy prefers (requires?) that you send patches inline and not as attachments.
        seniorgarcia 5y ago
        Which is pretty interesting. Apparently Outlook mangles inline patches for the lkml as well to the point that they are unusable and that would have been an interesting talking point in and of itself. But apparently talking about this is not in scope of this post and trying to piece together the issues just gets you downvoted so... Thanks for your advice, I was not aware that Gmail clobbers plain text mails, I guess there is more to it then getting your mail client to send plain text email. Maybe some explanation of the subject would have been nice.
- kelnos 5y ago
  > Or you can use an actual mail client. An "actual mail client" is any mail client that speaks SMTP. This "use a real X" or "real programmers always do X this way" stuff is why many tech communities are considered hostile and toxic, especially to newcomers. It's childish in personal settings and unprofessional in work settings. The funny thing is that most of the people who continue to hold these attitudes weren't even around or on the internet when it was slow and expensive to sling around rich text or binaries. I mean, I was born in the 80s and got an account with my local ISP in the early 90s, after spending a few years hanging out on BBSes playing door games (anyone remember Virtual Sysop?). I agree that binaries or anything other than plain text was a pain to deal with back then; I had a 2400 baud modem, and even when I managed to get something faster, the phone lines in my area were too noisy to give me anything faster than 19.2kbps. And I'm not some greybeard either; I wasn't around when 300 baud was state-of-the-art. But we've moved on from that time. It feels like the height of arrogance and gatekeeping to look down on someone who just wants to be able to italicize or bold some text in their emails sometimes.
  - a-dub 5y ago
    > But we've moved on from that time. It feels like the height of arrogance and gatekeeping to look down on someone who just wants to be able to italicize or bold some text in their emails sometimes. does rich email formatting still make a mess on mailing lists? most clients send a plaintext part, sure, but is it well formatted? i think it's okay for a team to have customs, and even engage in a little gatekeeping. it's not that much to ask considering how much effort goes in from long time contributors. last i heard github was adding features to actually make it harder to submit drive by PRs because exhausted maintainers were finding themselves further exhausted by uninvested contributors making superfluous contributions. (for events or name recognition or whatever) that said, disrespect is never a good thing.
    - comex 5y ago
      > last i heard github was adding features to actually make it harder to submit drive by PRs because exhausted maintainers were finding themselves further exhausted by uninvested contributors making superfluous contributions. Which features?
- calvin_ 5y ago
  I use a client that does make it easy, but I shouldn't have to worry about this. Mailing lists are basically full of people who use email in an exceedingly specific way no one outside of mailing list enthuiasts do anymore. I use a graphical email client, as do my coworkers, as do our customers. We don't care about top vs. bottom replies, plain text vs. email, etc. - those who do have lost touch with the average email user.
- ecf 5y ago
  Be careful. Writing out steps to send email in the way the maintainers of the Linux kernel desire might be deemed as manspaining. You wouldn’t want to get blocked, would you?
  - tfehring 5y ago
    The author already explained upthread that she knows how to do that and has a working setup to do so. But that process is onerous because LKML’s workflow is technologically backwards. (That’s my claim, not hers.) Assuming that someone with that kind of technical chops is too incompetent to Google “plain text gmail” is pretty disrespectful.
amluto 5y ago
Hmm. I usually have no problem sending to lkml using iOS’s mail app. Gmail also works if I tell it to format as plain text, but the editor is all kinds of buggy in plain text mode. FWIW, I don’t subscribe to lkml. Instead I point thunderbird at lore.kernel.org’s NNTP feed for the rare occasions in which I need to reply to an on-list message. To the extent that the list’s rules make it hard to get feedback, I consider this a problem. The whole mailing list is in the middle or a giant migration, and I’ll see if I can convince the new overlords to be less strict. (I usually get Linux email directed to me via MAINTAINERS, so this issue doesn’t affect me personally too much. The x86 alias isn’t part of vger and does not have the text hangup, at least to my knowledge.)
mlindner 5y ago
Apple Mail has a drop down menu to convert the mail to plaintext. Format-->Make Plain Text, it's even got a hotkey CMD+SHIFT+T. You can even default it to be in plain text under Composing settings in the Preferences.