[gentoo-user] Re: Email clients

[Grant Edwards <grant.b.edwards@gmail.com>]

On 2023-07-31, Kusoneko <kusoneko@kusoneko.moe> wrote:
>
> Jul 31, 2023 13:52:25 Grant Edwards <grant.b.edwards@gmail.com>:
>
>> On 2023-07-31, Kusoneko <kusoneko@kusoneko.moe> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Don't get me wrong, I'm "team plaintext" all day every day but I'm not
>>>> going to make my life more difficult on principles.  There are hills
>>>> worth dying on but this isn't mine.
>>>
>>> Iirc, you can setup mutt to open html emails either in a web browser
>>> or with something like w3m.
>>
>> Wait -- those are web engines. I thought the argument was that mutt
>> didn't need a web engine. If that was the case, then you would have no
>> need to set up mutt to use them to display HTML email.
>
> Why would you want a mail client to also be a web browser when you
> already have a web browser to do that job?

I don't want a mail client that's also a web browser. I want a mail
client that renders HTML. That's only a small small of what a web
browser does. Most of what a web browser does these days is provide an
environment in which to run JavaScript.

> I will never understand the mindset of trying to include web
> browsers into everything. Web browsers are massive pieces of
> software, including one in everything massively increases the
> compile time and resource usage of the software it's added into.

That's because they do a lot more than just render HTML.

>>> There's no need for a web engine in a mail client when you have a
>>> perfectly workable web engine in the browser.
>>
>> Composing HTML also e-mails requires a web-engine. Sure, you can do
>> that using emacs, markdown mode, a web browser for previewing, and so
>> on. It's a lot of work.
>
> I don't get the point of composing HTML emails. Let's be honest
> here, unless you're writing emails as part of a company with
> complicated messes of html signatures or marketing emails, the only
> difference between composing a plain text email and a html email for
> most people is unnoticeable.

I found that not to be the case for the Outlook users to whom I sent
e-mails. I was unable to figure out how to get mutt to generate
plaintext e-mails that were rendered properly by Outlook (e.g. using a
fixed font, honoring newlines and multiple spaces, etc.) in Outlook.

It's also difficult to get plaintext e-mails to display in a
reasonable way on both a large screen and a small screen
(i.e. phone). I was not happy seeing what my plaintext, 72 column
e-mails looked like on a small phone screen.

--
Grant