3 ms·

As I commented in another post bashing email recently, there's nothing to fix, and this can be easily pushed to the client. As a messaging protocol, email works

As I commented in another post bashing email recently, there's nothing to fix, and this can be easily pushed to the client. As a messaging protocol, email works great. If you want JSON messaging included, you could build a client that reads that specific MIME type and interprets it differently than other messages. Is this not how Outlook meeting requests work? They are just shown as random attachments in non-supporting clients. Outlook meetings are not part of the email standard, nor should they be. We don't need to add more cruft to email itself. If you want to create extra protocols for doing different things using email as a medium, go ahead. Email is extendable, as Microsoft, Gmail, Xobni, etc have shown. Long story short, you can do whatever the hell you want with email. It's not perfect, but it's a really great messaging framework. You can send any message you like, to whomever you like. How the recipient interprets that message is up to them (ie their client). EDIT: just wrote this up since I'm sick of repeating myself: http://blog.killtheradio.net/technology/email-is-not-broken-its-a-framework-not-an-application/ http://blog.killtheradio.net/technology/email-is-not-broken-...

sliverstorm 15y ago
The only properly-focused criticisms of email I've read go along the lines of "Email is uselessly robust". I don't personally agree, but what I'm getting at is I agree with your message. E-mail is fundamentally a messaging infrastructure; do with it what you will. If you don't like your inbox filling up- that's not an inherent flaw of RFC-5321 (and related RFC's).
lucian1900 15y ago
Actually, email as a standard is horrific. It would be worth the effort to replace it just to move to something more consistent.
eof 15y ago
> If you want JSON messaging included, you could build a client that reads that specific MIME type and interprets it differently than other messages This is literally what I suggested in the article.
verelo 15y ago
I think google wave actually solved the "email" problem...but they never built a SMTP addapter for it! I have no idea why, and it shut down before i ever got around to actually doing it. I viewed wave as a client (a slow buggy client...) and SMTP as an existing protocol. WAVE needs to talk to SMTP...and the other way around. If that was supported, not only would wave have taken off, but SMTP would have lived on in an improved format. This still keeps me up at night, i know the source for wave is available...so tempted to fire it up as my fix for email, yet life goes on.

sliverstorm 15y ago

The only properly-focused criticisms of email I've read go along the lines of "Email is uselessly robust". I don't personally agree, but what I'm getting at is I agree with your message. E-mail is fundamentally a messaging infrastructure; do with it what you will. If you don't like your inbox filling up- that's not an inherent flaw of RFC-5321 (and related RFC's).

lucian1900 15y ago

Actually, email as a standard is horrific. It would be worth the effort to replace it just to move to something more consistent.

eof 15y ago

> If you want JSON messaging included, you could build a client that reads that specific MIME type and interprets it differently than other messages This is literally what I suggested in the article.

verelo 15y ago

I think google wave actually solved the "email" problem...but they never built a SMTP addapter for it! I have no idea why, and it shut down before i ever got around to actually doing it. I viewed wave as a client (a slow buggy client...) and SMTP as an existing protocol. WAVE needs to talk to SMTP...and the other way around. If that was supported, not only would wave have taken off, but SMTP would have lived on in an improved format. This still keeps me up at night, i know the source for wave is available...so tempted to fire it up as my fix for email, yet life goes on.