On Thu, Nov 29, 2012 at 10:45:01AM -0500, Peter Davis wrote: > Bear in mind that this list, by it's very subject matter, self-selects > for members who tend towards old school tools and technologies. Mutt > users are obviously more likely to be strict about text-only, > 72-column wrapped messages than users of, say, GMail.
While I *don't* generally use Gmail (Google's already got enough information about me as it is), if you use the plaintext option in Gmail, it does seem to wrap at ~ 70 characters, even though you see a long line in the compose window. Ditto for the plaintext portion of a multipart/mixed message I sent. So if you're seeing unwrapped emails from Gmail users, perhaps they're not using Gmail's web-based client? Overall, I think Gmail gets it right not only more than most other webmail systems, but also more than most desktop mail clients -- it does give users enough rope to hang themselves, but does also give them the tools to quote and trim properly. It also gives you Pine-style keyboard commands if you enable them. <rant> One of the thing that bugs me is that, both on the backend side, and on the UI side, it seems like the open source folks have given up even trying to create an integrated system (i.e., not a bunch of stuff stuck together with duct tape and glue) that could be a "Gmail killer" (scalable, distributed storage, integrated calendaring). With more and more businesses and educational institutions outsourcing to Gmail, it won't be long before virtually everyone is using Gmail. Better than Exchange, maybe, but still not an ideal situation. And, if you talk about it, generally people's reaction is "well, can't compete with Google -- they've got too much money, talent, etc". </rant> w
