Re: [GSoC] A late proposal: a modern send-email

On Sat, Mar 26, 2016 at 7:43 AM, 惠轶群 [off-list ref] wrote:

2016-03-26 2:16 GMT+08:00 Junio C Hamano [off-list ref]:

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惠轶群 [off-list ref] writes:

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# Purpose
The current implementation of send-email is based on perl and has only
a tui, it has two problems:
- user must install a ton of dependencies before submit a single patch.
- tui and parameter are both not quite friendly to new users.

Is "a ton of dependencies" true?  "apt-cache show git-email"
suggests otherwise.  Is "a ton of dependencies" truly a problem?
"apt-get install" would resolve the dependencies for you.

There are three perl packages needed to send patch through gmail:
- perl-mime-tools
- perl-net-smtp-ssl
- perl-authen-sasl

Yes, not too many, but is it better none of them?

Are you sure using a GUI does not have any dependencies?

What's more, when I try to send mails, I was first disrupted by
"no perl-mime-tools" then by "no perl-net-smtp-ssl or perl-authen-sasl".
Then I think, why not just a mailto link?

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# Plan
So I propose to implement following:
- Allow user to send mail via a [`mailto`
link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mailto). so that users could
complete the mail in their favorite email clients such as gmail, mutt,
alpine and even gmail for android through

IIRC, GMail on Android is incapable of sending a "text/plain", so
that part may not fly well.

Really? As much as I known, GMail on Android is capable of sending
a "text/plain" while Inbox is not.

How do you plan in integrating GMail on Android so that it can send
patches which exists on your computer?

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- Build a simple email client (maybe a web components based web app or
wxwidgets based GUI client, they are both cross-platform) which is
easy to use for sending patch without disrupting the mailbox format.

I think introducing a GUI may lead to much more dependencies. Many git
developers already have perl packages in their system but they don't
have wxwidgets.

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I suspect it would yield a better result if the plan were to update
a popular email client and make it possible to tell it to read an
existing text file (i.e. mbox) without corrupting its contents.
People do not have to learn a new mail client if done that way.

Maybe a plugin? I'm not sure.

You could make a plugin. That would simply things.

If above `mail-to` is implemented, user could just using any mail
client, but a mail client adaptive for patch would be better:
- Do not allow user to edit the diff part
- always 'plan/text'
- visual