[python-committers] [OT] email clients

[Antoine Pitrou]

Le 03/11/2018 à 18:46, Donald Stufft a écrit :
> 
>> On Nov 3, 2018, at 1:42 PM, Antoine Pitrou <antoine at python.org
>> <mailto:antoine at python.org>> wrote:
>>
>>> Perhaps the difference is in that every mail client I’ve ever used
>>> presents mailing list threads (or any thread) as a singular flat stream
>>> anyways?
>>
>> Er, really?  Generally they give you an option to turn on or off
>> threaded display.  And that in itself is a huge advantage: you can
>> change the setting at will, depending on your preference.  Often you can
>> even do so on a per-folder or per-account basis (at least with
>> Thunderbird you do).
> 
> GMail’s webmail and Mail.app are really the only two mail clients I’ve
> used in the past decade or so to be honest.

I don't know anything about Mail.app, but as far as GMail I find it
quite hostile UI-wise.  Like many Google UIs, I might add (don't get me
started on Google Groups :-/).

I find it interesting that you are so disturbed by threaded discussion
views, while for some other people it's the reverse.  That advocates for
a system that allows both kinds of presentation, and Discourse isn't that.

As a side note, a similar debate was held about filesystem hierarchies
in the 2000s.  Some UI designers felt that tree-shaped hierarchies were
too complicated for most people, and started talking about replacing
them with elaborate task-driven views.  At the end, some of the
underlying technologies were kept (such as indexing and fast
content-based search), but filesystem hierarchies are still the primary
way of organizing user data on desktop / laptop computer systems.

Regards

Antoine.