Comments on: How Gmail could be better

By: Chris Swan

Chris Swan — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 08:58:05 +0000

I’ve always been a bit of a rich text and HTML refusenik for email, which is why I’ve stuck with the plain text mode. Maybe I should drag myself into this century, and just not bother with any fancy formatting. Seems a shame though for the sake of a simple option.

By: Cygal

Cygal — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 14:20:54 +0000

Actually I understand your problem, I was just referring to the fact that this behavior only happens in ‘Plain text’ mode, and the only reason that I see of using ‘plain text’ is to write on mailing lists, and on those the behavior makes sense.

And I do understand that it is ugly as hell if you have less than 80 columns. :)

By: Chris Swan

Chris Swan — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 08:21:22 +0000

The problem with the Blackberry isn’t around support for HTML (which
would hardly matter for
plain text emails anyway). It’s that when you have a linefeed every 78
characters mixed with a
screen that’s less than 80 characters wide then the result is ugly and
difficult to read. Like this.

On the other hand if Google gave me the option to just send very long lines then the device receiving it can slice them up to fit. All I’m asking for is an option. Maybe the default could be for mailing lists, or maybe the default could be in favour of mobile devices – I don’t care, I just want the choice.

By: Cygal

Cygal — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 08:15:02 +0000

It’s not really an ‘ancient standard’, it’s still used _a lot_ on mailing lists and usenet, and so on. And persons who post on those lists are used to plain text mails. It’s not a matter of screen size anymore, it’s a matter of habits, since gmail is used a lot with mailing lists and groups now.

Now, if the BlackBerry does not support html, I guess that’s an use case they did not think about.