Line wrapping, plaintext support for Linux Kernel community

Feature Suggestions
,
#1

Nearly all Linux related mailing list development is currently done using mutt/thunderbird/evolution.
And those email clients are all flawed in serious ways.

  • Mutt has the 1960ies UI going for it.
  • Thunderbird just permanently pegs a CPU core at 100% due to not coping with higher than normal mail volume.
  • Evolution does not filter email properly, it will just dump all incoming email into ‘Inbox’ if connection issues are had, like when moving around your laptop between WiFis.

So adding support for a few features could be a cheap and fast PR and adoption win.

Line wrapping support at 80-chars
Plain text email support
The general ability to cope with >100k emails

(Originally posted by robertfoss on GitHub.)

#2

Hey! Thanks for filing this—would it be possible for me to create a new email address and subscribe to the firehose of these emails? It’d be helpful to have a test account that mirrors the sort of email you’re receiving.

We’ve got #52 for plain text (sending) support—the app should handle incoming plaintext email fine as-is, but it doesn’t have any specific line wrapping settings (it just wraps based on the viewport width.)

(Originally posted by bengotow on GitHub.)

#3

The way I typically use these lists is by filtering them all into their own folder, except for any email that is explicitly To/CC/BCC-ing me. Those emails get to stay in the inbox.

After a few months you’ll have 100-200k emails. And having them around is kind of useful for searching for patches that have been submitted, so just throwing them away is not a great solution.

(Originally posted by robertfoss on GitHub.)

#4

Thanks @robertfoss — I’ve signed one of my test accounts up for these emails. It’s actually pretty difficult to sign up for the linux-kernel one without a client that sends plaintext. Hah :slight_smile: Will keep you posted on further improvements for this use case.

(Originally posted by bengotow on GitHub.)

#5

It looks like line wrapping is possible to implement via plugin, but even then, it’s going to be sending <br> elements once Mailspring HTML-ifies the message.

Is there any movement on plaintext support?

(Originally posted by kevinherron on GitHub.)

#6

kernel developers would need: messages in plain text, enabled/disable line wrapping via a button/hotkey, exclusive threading by message-id, download all messages in a thread (to be able to apply patches).

(Originally posted by soleen on GitHub.)

#7

Hey folks—linking this to #52. Mail merge is coming in an upcoming release, and I think that feature would also benefit a lot from a plaintext mode. I’ll take a look and see what it’d take to get this in.

(Originally posted by bengotow on GitHub.)

#8

Hi. Some time ago I posted this bug report: Don’t remove whitespaces from plaintext messages, which I think is related to the feature request discussed here.