4 ms·

Lack of basic formatting (links, fixed-width-blocks, bold, italic, strikethrough) and media-embedding in a way that's non-terrible is a problem. HTML email part

Lack of basic formatting (links, fixed-width-blocks, bold, italic, strikethrough) and media-embedding in a way that's non-terrible is a problem. HTML email partially solves that, but sucks and provides way too much formatting control. The threading's not great either. Otherwise I like email quite a bit. I'd consider switching back to it from chat programs/texting for friends-and-family communication if those problems could be fixed, somehow.

Jtsummers 5y ago
Threading used to be better in email clients. Then everyone went with Google's flat "conversation" presentation. Not that it was easy, or 100% reliable, but it was present in more email clients than it is today.
soco 5y ago
I don't use email for daily friends-family communication (doesn't have any of the needs I listed in OC) so I agree texting is the ideal tool for them. But for work communications? Chat has zero formatting anyway, even in comparison to text-only email. And while threading depends on the used client, it's more eye candy than a real need, if email search works (which it should).
- handrous 5y ago
  > Chat has zero formatting anyway, even in comparison to text-only email. Slack and WhatsApp support pointy-click GUI formatting and markdown-alike formatting for the things I mentioned. I think similar features are common in other options (Discord, Signal, WeeChat, whatever they're calling Riot now, Telegram, I would assume all those have something similar) It's short-form messaging so you can't, say, post a series of images with comments under each one, all in one message... but because of the medium, it's natural to just send that as multiple messages, each with one image and comment, anyway. Tables, lists, and headings (for obvious reasons, in that case—it's not natural to send messages long enough to need them) aren't present in any chat systems I've seen. I think the more mobile-oriented options (WhatsApp) may not support fixed-width (AKA code) blocks, but Slack and some others do. Slack (and maybe others) also has support for solo or collaborative formatted document creation & sharing, which does allow headings and lists and tables and such, the UI for which isn't all that different from creating an email, except that the results are more consistent for all readers. Those (and pretty much any other documents) can simply be posted in any thread or conversation. That's what I miss in email. Text-only email is fine for what it is, but HTML email is crap. Something in-between would be nice. Better UI for inlining, say, Markdown, would be great, and could be sent over plain-text email, but that's mostly up to clients to provide a useful reading-and-writing interface for that, so it's hard to get into a workflow of using that sort of thing unless all involved have similarly-capable clients.

Jtsummers 5y ago

Threading used to be better in email clients. Then everyone went with Google's flat "conversation" presentation. Not that it was easy, or 100% reliable, but it was present in more email clients than it is today.

soco 5y ago

I don't use email for daily friends-family communication (doesn't have any of the needs I listed in OC) so I agree texting is the ideal tool for them. But for work communications? Chat has zero formatting anyway, even in comparison to text-only email. And while threading depends on the used client, it's more eye candy than a real need, if email search works (which it should).

handrous 5y ago
> Chat has zero formatting anyway, even in comparison to text-only email. Slack and WhatsApp support pointy-click GUI formatting and markdown-alike formatting for the things I mentioned. I think similar features are common in other options (Discord, Signal, WeeChat, whatever they're calling Riot now, Telegram, I would assume all those have something similar) It's short-form messaging so you can't, say, post a series of images with comments under each one, all in one message... but because of the medium, it's natural to just send that as multiple messages, each with one image and comment, anyway. Tables, lists, and headings (for obvious reasons, in that case—it's not natural to send messages long enough to need them) aren't present in any chat systems I've seen. I think the more mobile-oriented options (WhatsApp) may not support fixed-width (AKA code) blocks, but Slack and some others do. Slack (and maybe others) also has support for solo or collaborative formatted document creation & sharing, which does allow headings and lists and tables and such, the UI for which isn't all that different from creating an email, except that the results are more consistent for all readers. Those (and pretty much any other documents) can simply be posted in any thread or conversation. That's what I miss in email. Text-only email is fine for what it is, but HTML email is crap. Something in-between would be nice. Better UI for inlining, say, Markdown, would be great, and could be sent over plain-text email, but that's mostly up to clients to provide a useful reading-and-writing interface for that, so it's hard to get into a workflow of using that sort of thing unless all involved have similarly-capable clients.