[seniorgarcia]

I don't post to this specific list, so there might be weird issues I'm not aware of but...

Gmail has the plain text option behind the 3dot menu in the bottom right corner. Apple Mail deserves to die a fiery death and I refuse to support it but "Format" -> "Make plain text" *may* send a plain text message, or not depending on the OS X lottery. You can force Apple Mail with "Preferences" -> "Composing" -> "Message Format" -> "Plain Text" to compose plain text messages. Or you can use an actual mail client.

[kelnos]

> Or you can use an actual mail client.

An "actual mail client" is any mail client that speaks SMTP. This "use a real X" or "real programmers always do X this way" stuff is why many tech communities are considered hostile and toxic, especially to newcomers. It's childish in personal settings and unprofessional in work settings.

The funny thing is that most of the people who continue to hold these attitudes weren't even around or on the internet when it was slow and expensive to sling around rich text or binaries. I mean, I was born in the 80s and got an account with my local ISP in the early 90s, after spending a few years hanging out on BBSes playing door games (anyone remember Virtual Sysop?). I agree that binaries or anything other than plain text was a pain to deal with back then; I had a 2400 baud modem, and even when I managed to get something faster, the phone lines in my area were too noisy to give me anything faster than 19.2kbps. And I'm not some greybeard either; I wasn't around when 300 baud was state-of-the-art.

But we've moved on from that time. It feels like the height of arrogance and gatekeeping to look down on someone who just wants to be able to italicize or bold some text in their emails sometimes.

[a-dub]

> But we've moved on from that time. It feels like the height of arrogance and gatekeeping to look down on someone who just wants to be able to italicize or bold some text in their emails sometimes.

does rich email formatting still make a mess on mailing lists? most clients send a plaintext part, sure, but is it well formatted?

i think it's okay for a team to have customs, and even engage in a little gatekeeping. it's not that much to ask considering how much effort goes in from long time contributors.

last i heard github was adding features to actually make it harder to submit drive by PRs because exhausted maintainers were finding themselves further exhausted by uninvested contributors making superfluous contributions. (for events or name recognition or whatever)

that said, disrespect is never a good thing.

[comex]

> last i heard github was adding features to actually make it harder to submit drive by PRs because exhausted maintainers were finding themselves further exhausted by uninvested contributors making superfluous contributions.

Which features?

[a-dub]

good question what, if anything, they actually added... but search hn history for "hacktoberfest" for background...

[seniorgarcia]

>>It feels like the height of arrogance and gatekeeping to look down on someone who just wants to be able to italicize or bold some text in their emails sometimes.

I really disagree with this part of your post. Plain text is just that, plain text. By definition there is no bold and no italics. We can talk about the the weird technical limitations and requirements for submitting inline patches all night if you like but I'm not sure what you are even complaining about aside from the technical limitations of plain text emails. If you think this is gatekeeping and it keeps you from expressing yourself I don't even know what to say.

[jhgb]

> An "actual mail client" is any mail client that speaks This "use a real X" or "real programmers always do X this way" stuff is why many tech communities are considered hostile and toxic, especially to newcomers. It's childish in personal settings and unprofessional in work settings.

Isn't it perfectly justified in "use the right tool for a job" situations? If someone tells me not to hammer nails in with a pair of pliers, I'd hardly consider it "unprofessional" or "childish". If tool A requires you to use tool B for interoperability, I would imagine a reasonable person would simply use tool B, and not complain about people being "hostile" or "toxic" for suggesting to do so.

[calvin_]

I use a client that does make it easy, but I shouldn't have to worry about this. Mailing lists are basically full of people who use email in an exceedingly specific way no one outside of mailing list enthuiasts do anymore. I use a graphical email client, as do my coworkers, as do our customers. We don't care about top vs. bottom replies, plain text vs. email, etc. - those who do have lost touch with the average email user.

[xena]

> Or you can use an actual mail client.

For those of you wanting an explanation of what I meant here, this is a perfect example of it. I do actually have aerc installed now. I just think it's annoying that I had to change my perfectly good workflow that is enough to get me hired at large companies for this.

> (this is NOT an invitation to get plaintext email mansplained to me, doing so will get you blocked)

[seniorgarcia]

Was my comment mansplaining? I'm genuinely curious.

Apple Mail sucks and I'm always shocked how many people think it's "good enough". All the Apple apps are barely functional but fall short when it comes to replace groupware (or actual standard compliant clients. Don't even get me started what Apple Contacts does to vCard).

>>I just think it's annoying that I had to change my perfectly good workflow that is enough to get me hired at large companies for this.

I don't get what workflow you are talking about.

[zerocrates]

The translation/context of the passage in the article was "look, I know how to send plaintext email, I just wish I didn't have to jump through these hoops, so please don't come and try to teach me how to do it" and that is kind of what your comment does.

[seniorgarcia]

Which is why I asked what the issue was and the author replied he/she was using Gmail/Apple Mail. I can see using the lkml with Apple Mail being difficult since Apple Mail sucks but sending plain text mails with Gmail should just work and nobody should have to change their email client if they are fine with using Gmail.

Even not using lkml, it's a standard conforming mailing list that (presumably) will accept any plain text mail just fine and I do not see why anybody would need to install a separate email client like aerc just to use this mailing list. So, to me it read "I know how plaintext emails work but for some reason my workflow does not work so I changed it to include something else" and I was curious as to why... Curse me for asking? Curse me for damning Apple Mail? Idk... I guess curse me for being curious and trying to help a fellow nerd out while shitting on Apple Mail at the same time.

[zerocrates]

I don't want to make like, a federal case out of this, but since you're asking:

She said, in effect, "don't explain to me how to do plaintext email, I don't need/want that," and though your comment is in small part calling out Apple, it's mostly an explanation of how to do plaintext in Mail.app and Gmail, and then a suggestion to not use it because it's not "real." So it's largely a "let me show you how to do this right" kind of comment.

[kelnos]

This might be out of date, but IIRC GMail, in plain text mode, will break lines at 72 or 80 characters or something like that, which will mangle inline patches. LKML's policy prefers (requires?) that you send patches inline and not as attachments.

[amluto]

I personally send patches with git send-email. I used to do it by fighting with Thunderbird until it worked, but that got old fast.

Now if only git format-patch could more usefully infer the base commit...

[seniorgarcia]

Which is pretty interesting. Apparently Outlook mangles inline patches for the lkml as well to the point that they are unusable and that would have been an interesting talking point in and of itself.

But apparently talking about this is not in scope of this post and trying to piece together the issues just gets you downvoted so... Thanks for your advice, I was not aware that Gmail clobbers plain text mails, I guess there is more to it then getting your mail client to send plain text email. Maybe some explanation of the subject would have been nice.

[xenadu02]

I am going to over-explain in detail in my reply. You may already know this but I know we have a lot of neuro-divergent folks, people who have difficulty understanding social interactions, and similar on HN so perhaps it will be of benefit. I am in no way trying to imply that you or anyone else isn't aware of these factors. Nor am I trying to claim that my explanations are the full and complete explanations.

In your first post you said:

>I don't post to this specific list, so there might be weird issues I'm not aware of

So right off the bat you are declaring "I do not have the same problem as the OP". This is in response to a post where the OP said "I know how to solve this problem, please do not offer me explanations". So you jump in with admittedly no experience with this specific issue where someone explicitly told you they don't want your input... to give your input. That in and of itself is rude behavior. Especially when this is something anyone with a moderate technical background can figure out with a Google search so it isn't likely to be unique or useful.

Even if you didn't intend it (and I'm sure you did not!) the implication is that she's non-technical so she either wouldn't know what to search for or would have a difficult time figuring out the instructions so your input will obviously save her time and effort. Because she is technical (as is obvious because she's talking about emailing the Linux Kernel mailing list which is an extremely geeky thing to be doing) and perfectly capable of solving the problem herself (as she indicated in the post) it can sometimes seem like you're being sexist by assuming otherwise. Obviously this is not the intent of everyone (or even most) people but the OP has no way of knowing that and has likely experienced similar behavior that was later proven to be driven by sexism. So it leaves her in a difficult spot: how many people who ignored my request not to explain the solution are doing it because they are rude, how many are doing it because they think "she's just a woman, she won't understand these things", and how many are doing it just to troll on purpose? And if she replies in a negative way is this one of the men who will start harassing her, trying to dox her, or stalk her to "put her in her place"? That's a small percentage of men who do that but she has no way of knowing which ones are the unhinged ones and which ones aren't.

The other major problem with this behavior is that it is exhausting when it happens frequently. It becomes tiring to have to politely explain yourself over and over. Any human on the planet in this situation - unless they have super-human levels of patience - will eventually stop offering fully qualified explanations. When women do this they are often perceived negatively or as having a bad personality if they try to enforce boundaries or request respect (see below about violence).

The reason it is called "mansplaining" is partially because it is something done by men more frequently because growing up girls are often socialized to be as quiet and unobtrusive as possible while a subset of boys are socialized to believe everyone should listen to their thoughts and opinions. Obviously that is not always the case. As a subject matter expert and man myself I don't have a big problem with the term because while I have had people "mansplain" how a product I work on works (incorrectly I might add) I have never had a woman attempt to do that... it is exclusively men who try this with me. Millions of people use it so it isn't a completely tiny sample size, but I do admit it is anecdotal.

As they grow up women are far more likely to have some random man they don't know get angry and physically grab them or threaten them if they tell the man they don't need his input or they want to be left alone. This is something I've witnessed happen to women many times while never having seen the opposite (a random woman a man does not know getting irate, in that man's face, screaming at him, or physically preventing him from leaving and/or hurting him because he politely told her he wasn't interested in her input. Emphasis on "random" person here, not someone known to the victim). How does this relate? One of the reasons women are socialized to always be nice, polite, and quiet is because of the risk of harassment or violence from random men she does not know. Do most men do this? No. But enough that it is quite common. If you really took the time to listen to the women you know (and didn't try to argue or excuse away the behavior) most of them would have at least a few stories like this. Then survey the men you know to find out how often they've had anything similar happen to them. Again emphasis on random strangers, not ex partners, coworkers, etc. (For my own pre-emption posting that you're a man and it happened to you once is not helpful. Obviously it happens, it is just far less common. It is still unacceptable regardless of gender).

[ecf]

Be careful. Writing out steps to send email in the way the maintainers of the Linux kernel desire might be deemed as manspaining. You wouldn’t want to get blocked, would you?

[tfehring]

The author already explained upthread that she knows how to do that and has a working setup to do so. But that process is onerous because LKML’s workflow is technologically backwards. (That’s my claim, not hers.) Assuming that someone with that kind of technical chops is too incompetent to Google “plain text gmail” is pretty disrespectful.