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I used pine religiously until Gmail had keyboard shortcuts. Now I just can't get myself back into it. I applaud those who are still functioning with text based

I used pine religiously until Gmail had keyboard shortcuts. Now I just can't get myself back into it. I applaud those who are still functioning with text based mail clients. At this point, it feels like a real effort of love and I can absolutely get behind that.

tiben_ 4y ago
+1 cli dogma has limits. I now use Gnome/Evolution which just "works"
- jethro_tell 4y ago
  * for your usecase, congrats!
  - tiben_ 4y ago
    I think it answer needs of a lot of people myself included.
yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
I guess it depends on your emails. If you need graphics/formatting then yeah text-mode clients are a questionable pick. If you mostly deal with text, then they remain much nicer to use than "modern" alternatives.
jacobsenscott 4y ago
All these text only mail tools are fine for reading mail, but if you need to actually send mail most likely your recipients are seeing some nearly unreadable email. No modern mail reader does well with plain text email. Most likely it doesn't wrap properly on small screens (phone) for example so they are scrolling horizontally. It doesn't wrap properly on large screens (they are seeing a narrow 80 or less character wide tower of text). If you are bottom posting most likely the recipient doesn't even scroll down and see it. If you are top posting plain texts probably break the ability for the reader to collapse the rest of the thread underneath and scatters > characters all over. The mail reader is probably choosing some nasty fixed width font. I say this as someone who spent too many hours trying to send email with emacs and being embarrassed by the terrible results. In the end you need to hack in some markdown to html converter and write all your mail in markdown if you want any chance of a readable email. Mutt, emacs, whatever. They are fine mail readers. But you really can't write actual professional emails in them anymore.
- lpcvoid 4y ago
  Anecdotal, but I have absolutely no problem sending plaintext-only mails. So far it works very well and I kind of cringe every time I see HTML in emails.
  - jacobsenscott 4y ago
    Well, you can send 'till the cows come home. But have you viewed those emails in a web browser, an fat email client, a phone, phones of different sizes, etc. I guarantee they don't render well most of the time.
- cylinder714 4y ago
  The trick is that you have to use an email client that will accept an external editor, which in turn can format paragraphs. I am obsessive about formatting emails, and the `par' formatter is the only one I've encountered that can intelligently work with indentation and quoting characters: http://www.nicemice.net/par/ http://www.nicemice.net/par/ Vim has a basic formatter, and I'm not familiar with Emacs' tool, but I'll bet it's not as good as par. EDIT: Your point about reading plain-text email on mobile devices is very true, of course.
  - jacobsenscott 4y ago
    If by "formatting paragraphs" you mean putting line breaks in paragraphs, that's a losing battle. There is always a screen size where that's broken. There should be no line breaks, and viewer should wrap the text as needed. This is what HTML renderers are great at. Basically HTML is perfect for email, and the only reason plain text email exists is that it was invented before html.

tiben_ 4y ago

+1 cli dogma has limits. I now use Gnome/Evolution which just "works"

jethro_tell 4y ago
* for your usecase, congrats!
- tiben_ 4y ago
  I think it answer needs of a lot of people myself included.

yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago

I guess it depends on your emails. If you need graphics/formatting then yeah text-mode clients are a questionable pick. If you mostly deal with text, then they remain much nicer to use than "modern" alternatives.

jacobsenscott 4y ago

All these text only mail tools are fine for reading mail, but if you need to actually send mail most likely your recipients are seeing some nearly unreadable email. No modern mail reader does well with plain text email. Most likely it doesn't wrap properly on small screens (phone) for example so they are scrolling horizontally. It doesn't wrap properly on large screens (they are seeing a narrow 80 or less character wide tower of text). If you are bottom posting most likely the recipient doesn't even scroll down and see it. If you are top posting plain texts probably break the ability for the reader to collapse the rest of the thread underneath and scatters > characters all over. The mail reader is probably choosing some nasty fixed width font. I say this as someone who spent too many hours trying to send email with emacs and being embarrassed by the terrible results. In the end you need to hack in some markdown to html converter and write all your mail in markdown if you want any chance of a readable email. Mutt, emacs, whatever. They are fine mail readers. But you really can't write actual professional emails in them anymore.

lpcvoid 4y ago
Anecdotal, but I have absolutely no problem sending plaintext-only mails. So far it works very well and I kind of cringe every time I see HTML in emails.
- jacobsenscott 4y ago
  Well, you can send 'till the cows come home. But have you viewed those emails in a web browser, an fat email client, a phone, phones of different sizes, etc. I guarantee they don't render well most of the time.
cylinder714 4y ago
The trick is that you have to use an email client that will accept an external editor, which in turn can format paragraphs. I am obsessive about formatting emails, and the `par' formatter is the only one I've encountered that can intelligently work with indentation and quoting characters: http://www.nicemice.net/par/ http://www.nicemice.net/par/ Vim has a basic formatter, and I'm not familiar with Emacs' tool, but I'll bet it's not as good as par. EDIT: Your point about reading plain-text email on mobile devices is very true, of course.
- jacobsenscott 4y ago
  If by "formatting paragraphs" you mean putting line breaks in paragraphs, that's a losing battle. There is always a screen size where that's broken. There should be no line breaks, and viewer should wrap the text as needed. This is what HTML renderers are great at. Basically HTML is perfect for email, and the only reason plain text email exists is that it was invented before html.