what email is to me

[Jonathan LaCour]

First off, thanks Brent for getting this started. Its been a topic near 
and dear to my heart for years. Its about time someone stepped up to the 
plate to push for a better email client.

When it comes to email, consider me a bit of a Luddite. Most email 
clients these days seem focused on trying to decorate my email with 
things I don't really need like stationary, rich text editing, tagging, 
and other such cruft. In the meantime, they all seem to miss the mark on 
the thing I care about the most: composing and reading email.

Ideally, I'd like my email client to have the following basic features:

1. A minimalistic, responsive user interface focused on reading
    threaded conversations of email, like mailing lists.

2. An email composer focused on plain-text email composition. I want
    all the power of TextMate here. I want my tabs auto-expanded into
    spaces. I want my text to be hard-wrapped automatically.

3. For organization, I my needs are simple. Give me a view of my IMAP
    hierarchy. Let me define an "archive" folder. Give me effective
    search. I don't really need filters or rules, since those will live
    server-side in Gmail, Google Apps, or procmail. Client side rules are
    silly, especially now that most of us have multiple devices where we
    manage our email. I don't need tags/labels/topics since search is all
    I need to find an archived email 99% of the time.

I don't want the most powerful email client ever built. I want one that 
does only what it needs to do, and no more.

--
Jonathan LaCour
http://cleverdevil.org/train
CTO, ShootQ – http://web.shootq.com