-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Skyring wrote: Well, not that I want to start moaning about gmail, but if the way it works is not in line with existing email clients and email servers, which it does, as it ignores the in-reply-to header, I wouldn't really call it "very good". :) Chris - -- Chris Jenkinson chris(a)starglade.org

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Skyring wrote: Not at all. The position I'm in is that Google have made an email client which 'breaks' existing conventions for threading, and so it makes people (possibly unintentionally) take shortcuts, which work for them, but don't work for others. I have a gmail account and indeed I used to use it to post to this mailing list. I prefer a dedicated email client, such as Thunderbird, however. I do agree that gmail displays it in an accessible manner, with some clever functionality. This, of course, can be achieved without breaking existing conventions. In the meantime, please don't take shortcuts to start new threads. The post reply button is for exactly that, and nothing else! :) Chris - -- Chris Jenkinson chris(a)starglade.org

On Fri, 15 Jul 2005 10:02:16 +0100 Chris Jenkinson <chris(a)starglade.org> wrote: Agreed, was thinking the same thing myself! "Rather poor" is probably a better description if that's the case. -- Dig It : a forum for Euro Beatles fans - http://beatles.dyndns.org/

On 15/07/05, Skyring <skyring(a)gmail.com> wrote: At risk of being pedantic, the distinction is more between the way it *presents* threads (very well) and the way it *defines* them (rather badly). I really like GMail's interface for dealing with conversations, and it's a bold step away from the traditional tree-view. However, for some reason best known to its designers, it ignores the standard [and, I believe, Standardised] way of defining a thread (the headers in each message which indicate its relationship to others) and uses completely idiosyncratic heuristics instead. As an example of why this method is actually *worse* (rather than just different), note that I had to search for the beginning of this thread, because someone had changed the subject and GMail could not connect the two parts. There may be counter-examples where it handles certain situations *better*, but it seems to me that they'd have done better building *on top of* long-established conventions, rather than ignoring them. For me, GMail is "quite good" at threads right now, but would be "very good" if it used in-reply-to etc as at least a factor in its grouping. This, of course, is absolutely true, and I hope no-one is too annoyed at the off-topic-ness of this thread. -- Rowan Collins BSc [IMSoP]

Just in case people didn't know, GMail will automatically remember the addresses of anyone you have sent mail to or replied to. Just type "w" in the "to" field and <wikien-l(a)wikipedia.org> should be there, presuming you've sent a message to the list before. That's just as easy as replying to some other message. On 7/16/05, James Gibbon <wikipedia(a)jamesgibbon.com> wrote: -- Stephen Bain stephen.bain(a)gmail.com

On 18/07/05, James Gibbon <wikipedia(a)jamesgibbon.com> wrote: No, GMail has a built-in auto-complete from its internal address book. You have to remember that GMail is so heavily JavaScripted that it's more like a mail client in its own right that just happens to run inside your web browser - a genuine "web application", I guess, although that term is so full of hype it makes me cringe to use it. It's actually got some quite interesting UI features, like the "stack of cards" conversation display, and the way the spell-check works. [Of course, you can also view it in "basic HTML" or connect to your inbox over POP3, but the normal interface is part of what makes it stand out] (If you want to try it out for yourself and see what I mean, drop me a line and I'll "invite" you) -- Rowan Collins BSc [IMSoP]