[Design] How basic can we stand for email?

[Jared Rhine]

Katie Capps Parlante wrote:
> Another avenue of inquiry that Mimi has mentioned: what's the littlest
> bit of email features that we could put up with for people like Ted,
> Pieter and Philippe to use it, given the integration benefits?

One feature I haven't seen mentioned in this thread specifically that I rely
on is Bcc.  I will happily compose email on just about any client anywhere
as long as I can throw in a Bcc to jared at wordzoo.com from it.  I use
server-side filtering to keep a complete archive of all outgoing items I
send in datestamped IMAP folders.  (The server-side looks for things From:
me and handles them specially).

The server-side filtering also drops a copy into my inbox to serve as a
filing item (I either delete the outgoing item if done, file it in a project
file, leave it as a reminder in the inbox if I'm hoping for a response, or
mark it important if I really need a reminder)

The last year has seen me send from each of these more than once:
Squirrelmail, Outlook, Outlook Web Access, Thunderbird, Evolution, Sylpheed,
wanderlust (in emacs), and mutt.  I currently use 3 email clients to compose
and manage email on a weekly basis.  This works primarily because of wide
IMAP support these days and the use of the Bcc-myself to provide consistent
archiving and filing-reminders across the various clients.

Anyway, I'd probably give Chandler-based email composition a fair shake as
long as I could set a Bcc that got applied to all outgoing email automatically.

-- Jared