Re: [Evolution] Announcement: this mailing list will be retired by the end of Oct 2022

[Pete Biggs <pete biggs org uk>]

On Mon, 2022-10-31 at 03:49 +0100, Ángel wrote:
> On 2022-10-26 at 12:00 +0100, Pete Biggs wrote:
> > That's interesting. It looks like Gnome are using an old version of
> > Discourse then.
> >
> > The comments about categories and topics is interesting. I asked if
> > it were possible to create sub-categories in the Applications
> > category and the answer was a complete and resounding NO.
>
> I think you refer to 
> https://discourse.gnome.org/t/sub-categories/11733/6

Yes, that's the one.  

I think there was a couple of things that peeved me about that
discussion. Clearly they don't want anything to do with mailing lists,
nor do they seem to really care about the transition - "this is what we
are providing, live with it", if you don't like it, find somewhere
else. I fear that it's the kid with a ball - it's my ball, so we are
going to play by my rules - and the kid is still playing by their rules
as they kick the ball against the wall on their own.

The comments also about them providing the Gnome ecosystem, that
Evolution lives with in, for free, and so we should be a damn sight
more grateful about it. I feel that the contribution that *we* provide
for free in supporting the applications that makes Gnome what it is has
been deftly overlooked in all this. This list has provided a focus for
user support of Evolution and has many people with decades of
experience of using it. The support will almost certainly now become
fragmented: There will be a new mailing list which may, or may not,
fly; there will be Discourse that Gnome (not Evolution) stalwarts will
use - but not sure users will ever find it; but I think most support
will be via the distro forums now.


> > Plain text emails going into the system should be just that. I send
> > them as plain text not as markdown. If I wanted to give them some
> > form of extra formatting I would use HTML. Can't text just be
> > interpreted as text.
>
> Plain text emails often use _some_ symbols for *emphasis*.
> While there is no clear standard for that, interpreting them as
> markdown isn't that an odd choice.

It looks like in Discourse the plain text emails are shoved into an
HTML container without any further processing when displayed. So all
the white space is collapsed and a variable width font is used
destroying any semblance of formatting.  If they just surrounded plain
text with <pre> </pre> tags it would be better.

I have nothing against Markdown and I happily use it other on-line
things - but not email.

> That would be sensible. Although markdown should be mostly backwards
> compatible when feed with plaintext.
Yes, Markdown is - but Discourse seems to just take the Markdown
elements, and only those elements and change them into the equivalent
HTML leaving the rest of the text to the whims of a browser.

P.