DO NOT APOLOGIZE FOR REPLYING LATE TO MY EMAIL
by Ploum on 2026-02-11
https://ploum.net/2026-02-11-do_not_apologize_for_replying_to_my_email.html
You don’t need to apologize for taking hours, days, or years to reply to
one of my emails.
If we are not close collaborators, and if I didn’t explicitly tell you I
was waiting for your answer within a specific timeframe, then please
stop apologizing for replying late!
This is a trend I’m witnessing, probably caused by the addiction to
instant messaging. Most of the emails I receive these days contain some
sort of apology. I received an apology from someone who took five hours
to reply to what was a cold and unimportant email. I received apologies
in what was a reply to a reply I had sent only a couple of days earlier.
Apologizing for taking time to reply to my email is awkward and makes me
uncomfortable.
It also puts a lot of pressure on me: what if I take more time than you
to reply? Isn’t the whole point of asynchronous communication to be…
asynchronous? Each on its own rhythm?
I was not waiting for your email in the first place.
====================================================
As soon as my email was sent, I probably forgot about it. I may have
thought a lot before writing it. I may have drafted it multiple times.
Or not. But as soon as it was in my outbox, it was also out of my mind.
That’s the very point of asynchronous communication. That’s why I use
email. I’m not making any assumptions about your availability.
Most of the emails I send are replies to emails I received. So, no, I
was not waiting for a reply to my reply.
My email might also be an idea I wanted to share with you, a suggestion,
a random thought, a way to connect. In all cases, I’m not sitting there,
waiting impatiently for your answer.
Even if my email was about requesting some help or collaborating with
you, I’ve been trying to move forward anyway. Your reply, whenever it
comes, will only be a bonus. But, except if we are in close
collaboration and I explicitly said so in the email, I’m not waiting for
you!
I don’t want to know all the details of your life.
==================================================
Yes, you took several days to reply to my email. That’s OK. I don’t need
to know that it’s because your mother was dying of cancer or that you
were expelled from your house. I’m not making those up! I really receive
that kind of apology from people who took several days to reply to
emails that look trivial in comparison.
Life happens. If you have things more important to do than replying to
my email, then, for god’s sake, don’t reply to it. I get it! I’m human
too. If I sometimes reply to all the emails I receive for several days,
I may also archive them quickly for weeks because I don’t have the
mental space.
If you want to reply but don’t have time, put the burden on me
==============================================================
If I’m asking you something and you really would like to take the time
to reply to my email, it is OK to simply send one line like
> Hey Ploum, I don’t have the time and mental space right now. Could you
contact me again in 6 months to discuss this idea?
Then archive or delete my email. That’s fine. If I really want your
input, I will manage to remind you in 6 months. You don’t need to
justify. You don’t need to explain. Being short saves time for both of
us.
You don’t need to reply at all!
===============================
Except if explicitly stated, don’t feel any pressure to reply to one of
my emails. Feel free to read and discard the email. Feel free to think
about it. Feel free to reply to it, even years later, if it makes sense
for you. But, most importantly, feel free not to care!
We all receive too many messages in a day. We all have to make choices.
We cannot follow all the paths that look interesting because we are all
constrained by having, at most, a couple billion seconds left to live.
Consider whether replying adds any value to the discussion. Is a trivial
answer really needed? Is there really something to add? Can’t we both
save time by you not replying?
If my email is already a reply to yours, is there something you really
want to add? At some point, it is better to stop the conversation. And,
as I said, it is not rude: I’m not waiting for your reply!
Don’t tell me you will reply later!
===================================
Some people specialize in answering email by explaining why they have no
time and that they will reply later.
If I’m not explicitly waiting for you, then that’s the very definition
of a useless email. That also adds a lot of cognitive load on you: you
promised to answer! The fact that you wrote it makes your brain believe
that replying to my email is a daunting task. How will you settle for a
quick reply after that? What am I supposed to do with such a non-reply
email?
In case an acknowledgement is needed, a simple reply with "thanks" or
"received" is enough to inform me that you’ve got the message. Or "ack"
if you are a geek.
If you do reply, remind me of the context
=========================================
If you choose to reply, consider that I have switched to completely
different tasks and may have forgotten the context of my own message.
When online, my attention span is measured in seconds, so it doesn’t
matter if you take 30 minutes or 30 days to answer my email: I guarantee
you that I forgot about it.
Consequently, please keep the original text of the whole discussion!
Use bottom-posting style to reply to each question or remark in the body
of the original mail itself. Don’t hesitate to cut out parts of the
original email that are not needed anymore. Feel free to ignore large
parts of the email. It is fine to give a one-line answer to a very long
question.
I’m trying to make my emails structured. If there are questions I want
you to answer, each question will be on its own line and will end with a
question mark. If you do not see such lines, then there’s probably no
question to answer.
If you do top posting, please remind me briefly of the context we are
in.
> Dear Ploum,
>
> I contacted you 6 months ago about my "fooing the bar" project after
we met at FOSDEM. You replied to my email with a suggestion of "baring
the foo." You also asked a lot of questions. I will answer those below
in your own email:
In short, that’s basic mailing-list etiquette.
Mailing list etiquette (www.mediawiki.org)
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Mailing_list_etiquette
No, seriously, I don’t expect you to reply!
===========================================
If there’s one thing to remember, it’s that I don’t expect you to reply.
I’m not waiting for it. I have a life, a family, and plenty of projects.
The chance I’m thinking about the email I sent you is close to zero. No,
it is literally zero.
So don’t feel pressured to reply. Should you really reply in the first
place? In case of doubt, drop the email. Life will continue.
If you do reply, I will be honored, whatever time it took for you to
send it.
In any case, whatever you choose, do not apologize for replying late!
And use plaintext email!
https://useplaintext.email/
OFFPUNK 3.0 "A COMMUNITY IS BORN" RELEASE
by Ploum on 2026-02-09
https://ploum.net/2026-02-09-offpunk3.html
For the last four years, I’ve been developing Offpunk, a command-line
Web, Gemini, and Gopher browser that allows you to work offline. And
I’ve just released version 3.0. It is probably not for everyone, but I
use it every single day. I like it, and it seems I’m not alone!
Offpunk, the offline-first command-line browser
gemini://offpunk.net
Something wonderful happened on the road leading to 3.0: Offpunk became
a true cooperative effort. Offpunk 3.0 is probably the first release
that contains code I didn’t review line-by-line. Umerdify (by Vincent
Jousse), all the translation infrastructure (by the always-present
JMCS), and the community packaging effort are areas for which I barely
touched the code.
So, before anything else, I want to thank all the people involved for
sharing their energy and motivation. I’m very grateful for every
contribution the project received. I’m also really happy to see "old
names" replying from time to time on the mailing list. It makes me feel
like there’s an emerging Offpunk community where everybody can
contribute at their own pace.
There were a lot of changes between 2.8 and 3.0, which probably means
some new bugs and some regressions. We count on you, yes, you!, to
report them and make 3.1 a lot more stable. It’s as easy at typing
"bugreport" in offpunk!
From the deepest of my terminal, thank you!
But enough with the cheering, let’s jump to…
The 11 most important changes in Offpunk 3.0
============================================
Instructions to install Offpunk
gemini://offpunk.net/install.gmi
Dowload Offpunk 3.0
https://git.sr.ht/~lioploum/offpunk/refs/v3.0
0. Use Offpunk in your language.
================================
Offpunk is now translatable and has been translated into Catalan,
Galician, and Dutch. Step-in to translate Offpunk into your language!
(awesome work by JMCS with the help of Bert Livens)
How to help translating Offpunk (offpunk.net)
gemini://offpunk.net/translation.gmi
1. Openk as a standalone tool
=============================
"opnk" standalone tool has been renamed to "openk" to make it more
obvious. Openk is a command-line tool that tries to open any file in the
terminal and, if not possible, opens it in your preferred software,
falling back to xdg-open as a last resort.
People using opnk directly should change it everywhere. Users not using
"opnk" in their terminal are not affected.
2. See XKCD comics in your terminal
===================================
"xkcdpunk" is a new standalone tool that allows displaying XKCD comics
directly in your terminal.
XKCDpunk in action
https://ploum.net/files/offpunk3_xkcd.png
3. Get only the good part and remove cruft for thousands of websites
====================================================================
Offpunk now integrates "unmerdify," a library written by Vincent Jousse
that extracts the content of HTML articles using the "ftr-site-config"
set of rules maintained by the FiveFilters community.
Unmerdify on Codeberg
https://codeberg.org/vjousse/unmerdify
You can contribute by creating or improving rules for your frequently
visited websites.
Site Patterns | FiveFilters.org Docs (help.fivefilters.org)
https://help.fivefilters.org/full-text-rss/site-patterns.html#github-reposi…
fivefilters/ftr-site-config: Site-specific article extraction rules to
aid content extractors, feed readers, and 'read later' applications.
(github.com)
https://github.com/fivefilters/ftr-site-config
If no ftr rule is found, Offpunk falls back to "readability," as has
been the case since 0.1. "info" will tell you if unmerdify or
readability was used to display the content of a page.
To use umerdify, users should manually clone the ftr-site-config
repository:
git clone https://github.com/fivefilters/ftr-site-config.git
Then, in their offpunkrc:
> set ftr_site_config /path/to/ftr-site-config
Automating this step is an objective for 3.1
4. Offpunk goes social with "share" and "reply"
===============================================
New social functions: "share" to send the URL of a page by email and
"reply" to reply to the author if an email is found. "Reply" will
remember the email used for each site/capsule/hole.
5. Browse websites while logged in
==================================
Offpunk doesn’t support login into websites. But the new "cookies"
command allows you to import a cookie txt file to be used with a given
http domain.
From your traditional browser (Firefox, Librewolf, Chromium, … ), log
into the website. Then export the cookie with the "cookie-txt"
extension. Once you have this "mycookie.txt" text file, launch Offpunk
and run:
> cookies import mycookie.txt https://domain-of-the-cookie.net/
This allows you, for example, to read LWN.NET if you have a
subscription. (contributed by Urja)
6. Bigger, better images, even in Gemini
========================================
Images are now displayed by default in gemini and their display size has
been increased.
Gemini capsule of Thierry Crouzet displayed in Offpunk
https://ploum.net/files/gemini_crouzet
This can be reverted with the following lines in offpunkrc:
> set images_size 40
> set gemini_images false
Remember that images are displayed as "blocks" when reading a page but
if you access the image URL directly (by following the yellow link
beneath), the image will be displayed perfectly if you are using a
sixels-compatible terminal.
7. Display hidden RSS/Atom links
================================
If available, links to hidden RSS/Atom feeds are now displayed at the
bottom of HTML pages.
This makes the "feed" command a lot less useful and allows you to
quickly discover interesting new feeds.
8. Display blocked links
========================
Links to blocked domains are now displayed in red by default.
A blocked link to X on standblog.orghttps://ploum.net/files/standblog_blocked.png
This can be reverted with the following lines in offpunkrc:
> theme blocked_link none
9. Preset themes
================
Support for multiple themes with "theme preset." Existing themes are
"offpunk1" (default), "cyan," "yellow" and "bw." Don’t hesitate to
contribute yours!
10. Better redirects and true blocks
====================================
"redirects" now operate on the netcache level. This means that no
requests to blocked URLs should ever be made (which was still happening
before)
And many changes, improvements and bugfixes
===========================================
- "root" is now smarter and goes to the root of a website, not the
domain.
Old behaviour can still be achieved with "root /"
- "ls" command is deprecated and has been replaced by "links"
- new "websearch" command configured to use wiby.me by default
- "set default_cmd" allows you to configure what Offpunk will do when
pressing enter on an empty command line. By default, it is "links 10."
- "view switch" allows you to switch between normal and full view
(contributed by Andrew Fowlie)
- "help help" will allow you to send an email to the offpunk-users
mailing list
- "bugreport" will send a bug report to the offpunk-devel mailing list
- And, of course, multiple bugfixes…
Come and join the Offpunk community!
gemini://offpunk.net/help.gmi
