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Comment by the__alchemist | Hacker News Reader

There are so many annoyances in TB. I stopped using it after a few days. My primary concerns:

  - Opening an email thread opens multiple (potentially many) tabs, and is difficult to nagivate or understand the flow of messages
  - I don't know how to write an email without it making the spacing between paragraphs/lines larger than I would like. (I.e. double-spacing)
  - Search is unreliable / broken.

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> I don't know how to write an email without it making the spacing between paragraphs/lines larger than I would like. (I.e. double-spacing)

The Compose window by default uses Paragraph style. Change it to Text instead, that works like you want. You can change the default in the settings. Still not ideal because in some cases after certain types of formatting it still reverts to Paragraph style.

Ctrl + Shift + O opens a threaded conversation in a new tab.

Settings > Composition > Use paragraph format… set to unchecked

Search has always worked pretty well for me, with the exception of not searching message bodies in a folder that's set to only download messages on demand. If the folder is set for offline use, the bodies are there and searchable. I use the Quick Filter bar 99% of the time, anyway, it's great.

Still my preferred client.

Shift+Enter for a normal new line. No idea why it's like this.

If my understanding is correct, enter by default starts a new paragraph (<p>…</p> in HTML). Holding shift makes it add a line break (<br> in HTML).

I think maybe Thunderbird has a plain text mode where this doesn’t happen, but it’s been a while since I last used it, so I could be completely wrong.

Ah that would make sense I suppose as it's sending HTML by default.

It does have a plain text mode!

Thunderbird does have a plain text mode, and you set it to be the default. Nice thing about TB is that defaulting to plain text doesn't lock you into plain text like a lot of other editors out there--If you add any formatting it silently switches you to HTML email.

The default paragraph style has some margin.

- You can do Shift+Enter to get a `br` without breaking the paragraph. - You can change the format from "Paragraph" to "Body Text" to remove the margin. Note that Thunderbird changes new lines back to "Paragraph" automatically, so you need to frist write your email, then format it as "Body Text". - Or, you can disable the "Use Paragraph format instead of Body text by default" option in the settings, to always have "Body text".

Good to know.

I've always wondered why HTML editors tend to work this way (Wordpress is the same), instead of having a single enter key be a line break and a double enter key be a paragraph.

What did you replace it with?

mutt?

Mutts also litter your home.

Webmail (Fastmail's official webapp in this case)

I agree. I might swap over to a TUI mail client on my desktop. Don’t even get me started on the iOS Mail app.

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