Formatting outgoing e-mails

[Stuart]

I am keep to purchase (the free limits are too limiting for me) and like the app BUT ...

I need to be able to format outgoing e-mails (bold, italic, underline, etc).  I appreciate that it is not supported at the moment but any ideas when it will be ?

Asking because, whilst I don't like MailDroid much, it does support this feature

[jmccabe]

Stuart,

I'm intrigued; do you mind me asking why you _need_ to be able to format outgoing mails?

I'm particularly interested because all that formatting stuff is often done by sending two versions of your message; one in plain text, and one in HTML (generally as an attachment). To me it's utterly pointless. The formatting adds substantially to the size of the message and therefore significantly increases your data usage for each message. It's also possible, in plain text, to indicate *bold*, /italic/ and _underline_ quite clearly and you don't put any reliance or demands on the facilities of the recipient's mail app to allow them to read it.

Just asking...

John

[Stuart]

"Need" is that it is something that makes the app useful (as I don't want people receiving to know I am not in the Office).  As my desktop client send in HTML format and I tend to use formatting to emphasise meanings, when they get a plain text reply is will immediately tell them "not in office".  It is a bit f a "fraud" in some respects as small organisations like to pretend they are larger than they really are and thus have a "team" always available for support in the office (ready and waiting for their e-mail).  However, in the real world I am out and about visiting customers but every client like to think they are special and have 100% of our time ...

Plus, as I use formatting to emphasise, it is something I would lose.  I tried the *bold*, etc. and my e-mail client displays them as raw text (i.e. *bold* appears as an asterisk followed by the "bold" characters then another asterisk.

So "need" could be rephrased as it being a very important feature.

Edit note:
For my own needs, whilst a full wysiwyg editor would be great, were the app to convert the *bold* /italic/ etc. into an html message with the formatting it would be great (i.e. it created an html message but no need to develop wysiwyg makes development quicker and easier - though I'm sure longer term would mean full thing).

[jmccabe]

Perhaps you could try setting your desktop client to send in plain text :-)

Seriously though, thanks for answering my questions, despite it really being none of _my_ business!

John

[Stuart]

... thanks for answering my questions, despite it really being none of _my_ business!

As a software developer myself I appreciate how quick and easy it is to request a feature that may be a massive development.  And some features might just be a person wanting something that "sounds like a good idea" but would end-up never being used.  Hence it is quite reasonable that I "justify" or explain my request.

I also think it would be a significant feature of the app.  As far as I can see, (of the "mainstream" e-mail clients) MailDroid is the only e-mail client app that supports this feature and their UI for text formatting messages is aesthetically not great (oversized buttons taking very limited screen real-estate, not resizing to screens in portrait properly, etc.) - in my opinion anyway.  Given the already superior UI of AquaMail, I believe that the developer would make an excellent job of this functionality (in terms of usability, aesthetics, etc.), giving the app a major feature over other comparable apps (including the "stock" email clients).

[jmccabe]

Interesting point about MailDroid; I came to Android a couple of years ago and tried MailDroid then. I found a number of issues with it at the time and ended up with K9. Having just got a new phone I thought I'd see what had happened in the meantime and found AquaMail. I guess I don't miss the formatting stuff because I never use any of it anyway! I've got Outlook at work set up to send plain text and to read everything as plain text (although sometimes I have to switch it to html to see the formatting other people have added - mostly unnecessarily and often because Outlook is quite rubbish at handling quoting when you're not using plain text, and is pretty bad at handling quoting when you _are_ using plain text!). Outlook really is a big issue in terms of email etiquette; it's so ubiquitous for a start, defaults to HTML (or RichText) mail, as I mentioned it's quoting facilities for replies are pretty bad so it promotes top-posting instead of inline discussions...aaaaarrrrrggghhhh basically!

Ah well - if only we could go back to the good old days where email was all plain text and, if you really wanted or needed to send someone a 'letter' that was nicely formatted etc, you added it as an attachment! :-)

All the best
John