Some people talk about mailing lists with a lot of reverence, but I have only ever found them to be extremely ugly and unreadable.

Are there any good clients out there that make them readable? For example a lemmy-like, threaded interface with interactivity? Or for PR/MRs an interface that shows the diffs with syntax highlighting, toggleable unified and side by side diff views, ability to comment within diffs and continue discussions within them (maybe even threaded)?

  • schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de
    7·
    20 hours ago

    I don’t currently use mailing lists but when I did, I found Thunderbird very usable. Just set up a filter to move each list’s messages to a separate folder.

    For merge requests, doesn’t the default GitLab web interface do those things already …?

  • Alex@lemmy.ml
    7·
    21 hours ago

    I personally have email integrated into my editor (mu4e) so I can apply patches and search code directly from the email thread. It handles threads and searching really well.

  • who@feddit.orgEnglish
    4·
    20 hours ago

    If you hate having information delivered as text, you are never going to love mailing lists. They are not applications, and most likely never will be, since that would break the universal interoperability that makes email valuable.

    However, email does support threading, and it is possible to find user agents (clients) that support it. Perhaps someone who has compared them recently can offer suggestions for whatever platform you use. (I can’t, since I’ve been using a proprietary one for ages and don’t know what else is out there these days.)

    Also, you might find that some are better than others at formatting text to your liking.

    • onlinepersona@programming.devOP
      2·
      19 hours ago

      If you hate having information delivered as text, you are never going to love mailing lists.

      Wdym? I’m reading text right now. We are interacting with text right now. It has formatting, has linking, has syntax highlighting, all depending on the client.

      key: value
object:
  key: value

      All this exists in lemmy and I love it.

      A lot of other metadata exists in emails too:

      • identities
      • timing
      • person being responded to

      Even reactions could be implemented via email e.g if the response body is a single emoji --> reaction.

      • who@feddit.orgEnglish
        1·
        8 hours ago

        The problem is not data representation. Yes, you could build fancy display features into an app that understands email, and define a data format for representing those features in email attachments/parts. They could then display just fine in your Onlinepersona app. (Or you could just use HTML email, which already has partial support in some user agents, though it is not universal.) You could even go so far as to define a reply protocol for your app to share data edits via email attachments. Those replies would be useful to other people on a mailing list who run your app.

        But at that point, what you’re using is not a mailing list. It’s an Onlinepersona app that happens to use a mailing list as a transport for your overlay protocol. To everyone on the list who doesn’t use your app, its traffic would be noise.

        In other words, the problem is not data representation, but adoption. Good luck getting all the world’s email software to support your niche extensions. I think the most you can realistically hope for is to convince the members of your favorite mailing lists to either use your app or tolerate the noise it generates.

        If you’re confident that your app is wanted by enough people to make its development worthwhile, then go for it. Just realise that it won’t be an email client; it will be an Onlinepersona client.

  • tal@lemmy.todayEnglish
    2·
    18 hours ago

    For example a lemmy-like, threaded interface with interactivity?

    I don’t mean to be rude, but surely you’ve used an email client that supports threading before?

    I think I used elm at one point. (checks) Yeah, it doesn’t support threading. But everything after that that I’ve used for any length of time has.

    • onlinepersona@programming.devOP
      11·
      17 hours ago

      I’ll check out Thunderbird’s interface again, tried it more than a decade ago with a mailing list and it looked meh. Nothing like lemmy.

  • moonpiedumplings@programming.devEnglish
    2·
    20 hours ago

    The best thing I have found is this software, mailman. Check out an example: https://lists.openstack.org/archives/list/[email protected]/thread/GTPTFUPXXBDMWNQZGZDLM2IIX4FSTT5Y/

    It lets you view discussions as threads on a website, and then you when click reply, it gives you the option to reply using your email software. This is a really neat way to do it, although the UI definitely looks rough compared to lemmy. But it might be a better way to do email, where you literally just present it via a forum website but all “posts” and “comments” are handled by your email client.

    Or mailman lets you sign in and reply via the software itself, but idk if they are actually using that.

    • onlinepersona@programming.devOP
      2·
      20 hours ago

      I scrolled through the link but it can’t find the threads. The person Jeremy is responding to somebody but I can’t see who. Nothing seems to be indented to follow the discussion.

      I’m on mobile right now. Does that make a difference for mailman?

  • A_norny_mousse@piefed.zipDeutsch
    2·
    21 hours ago

    It’s a good question. I hope so, but I guess not - at best, a good email client will have some functionality that improves things a bit. Possible workflow:

    • a filter that puts all messages from one mailing list into a folder
    • enable Threaded View for that folder and possibly some other things that make it less “ugly” to you.

    If email itself isn’t interactive enough for you, I don’t see how to increase that with email. And what have PRs got to do with mailing lists per se?

    • onlinepersona@programming.devOP
      2·
      20 hours ago

      And what have PRs got to do with mailing lists per se?

      I posted in the programming community. Mailing lists are used for submitting patches.

      a good email client will have some functionality that improves things a bit

      I’ve tried Thunderbird, KMail, and whatever the Gnome one is called. Frankly, it doesn’t really improve on legibility. It’s a bit better, yes, but even hackernews looks better. It’s a far cry from lemmy’s UI. If they had markdown support, that would be an improvement.

      • A_norny_mousse@piefed.zipEnglish
        11·
        19 hours ago

        Mailing lists are used for submitting patches

        Inline? That seems wrong. Or as .patch files, i.e. attachments? Then the syntax highlighting becomes a task for whatever app opens that file.

        BTW Evolution has markdown support.

        I honestly don’t understand your complaints about the visuals. It’s plain text, sometimes HTML. It’s readable. It brings the info across. You can reply, personally or to the list. What do you want, banners? Google Fonts? Big friendly green buttons? A social-media-fication of your programming mailing list?

        The answer to what you’re asking for / complaining about boils down to “don’t use mailing lists if your community requires that amount of interactiveness and coding gamification”.