Changing the subject, as well as attaching multiple files at one message, are two features that are absolutely needed. Like any IMAP client, somehow they must be implemented.
Please work towards this direction.
These are the only reason not to have delta chat in my oppinion, as this is a great idea otherwise!
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An e-mail subject is important to better communicate with non-DC users.
While I was thinking about this, I came up with a few ideas that I would like to discuss here.
Three questions need to be answered:
1.) How to integrate entering an email subject into the UI?
2.) How should the subject be displayed?
3.) Does a subject also make sense in chats with DC users?
1.)
I would place the subject function in the attachment menu.
Strictly speaking, a subject is of course not an attachment, but you could interpret it as “attaching” a subject to the message. This would leave the chat view unchanged and it would not be overloaded with additional icons.
After the menu item “Subject” had been selected, a second input line would be displayed.
It could be closed again with the X icon. By having the “X” on the left side, accidental sending of the message would be avoided. In addition, the path for the pointer or finger would be shorter.
Example images:
2.)
The subject could be italicized or bolded in or above the speech bubble to make it stand out from the message body. But the chat view would probably quickly appear more confusing and less tidy.
Maybe it would be better to show the subject only once with the first email and otherwise only in case it should be changed. It might look like a Webxdc status message. This would make it clear to the user that a specific topic will be discussed from this point onwards. In addition, the email subject is displayed in “Show Full Message” anyway.
Example image:
3.)
Maybe it is possible to create something like threads using the subject.
Just like Webxdc messages, the subject could be displayed in the “Chat Audit Log” of DC-Desktop.
This way one could jump directly to the relevant topics/threads and continue them with “Reply”.
A separate thread overview is also conceivable.
One could access it by clicking on the subject.
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thanks a lot for this worked out suggestion, especially “1.” i find interesting, but also “2.” and thanks for providing screenshots as suggestions 
If we intend to move forward on settling subject-based e-mail handling, some notes:
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think about DC<->DC separately from NDC/DC displays/interactions but aim to unify subject-based mails (chat or not)
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as noted somewhere else, we use a “group title == subject” design – this also needs to be reflected especially in the NDC<->DC interaction, and with whatever we come up with regarding “2.”.
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try to find a step-wise approach instead of discussing a fully-formed out “ideal way” – you already nicely did this with “1.” but “2.” is still a bit hand-wavy
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what about quote-replying an older message (w/o subject from NDC or DC client)?
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Thanks for the constructive criticism.
Points 1 and 2 are my actual proposals.
Point 3 is just a half-baked idea of how a subject could possibly be used in a DC-DC chat.
Originally I didn’t want to publish it.
In order to communicate properly with non-DC users, I think it is necessary to be able to enter a subject.
For example: a DC user receives an email with the subject “Appointment postponement” and responds to it. From this point on, correspondence will be sent under this subject. This can lead to irritation if the DC user wants to wish the non-DC user a happy birthday at some point because the content of the message does not match the subject.
All of this only applies to 1:1 chats. In groups, the name is the subject.
In 1:1 chats with DC users, a subject makes little sense.
However, one could quickly jump to specific parts of the chat history if the subjects were displayed like webxdc status messages in the chat audit log (DC-Desktop).
The message in point 2 is actually only intended to show changes.
Either a new subject or none. It would also be possible to show the subject for each speech bubble, but I think that would be distracting. If necessary, one could check it via “Show Full Message”.
So if there is no subject, the message “No subject” should appear once.
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The solutions Raiden proposes, I think they are wonderful.
I would say, to try to implement something out of them first and then worry maybe about more special cases. I think they are excellent examples of how it could be implementted UI-wise.
It is VERY important to have a subject, as well as attaching more than one files in the same message. That last one would be just a few lines of HTML, as images and data are sent as base64 strings anyway.
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I inadvertently duplicated Raiden’s work, with similar if not identical results:
To accommodate Raiden’s nice background waterfall image, maybe just the left or right margin could change colour according to the subject.
I think searching by subject, thread views, etc. could be something different clients could choose to do differently. And it could certainly be done later, after basic subject functionality exists, if people want it.
with DC version 2 we have dedicated chats for unencrypted email communications, in this chats it is clear the usage is for email and we could always display subjects and a subject field to set the subject, the chat name (email thread name) ideally would be something that is meaningful to you and changed only locally, while the actual subject is controlled by the user
User-settable subjects sound good! 
There are lots of good ways for the UI to display and set subjects, all of which would be fine by me.
I have an idea how a subject could be implemented without having to change the UI. Essentially a subject is nothing more than a tag. DC-Desktop already supports hashtags. In my opinion, this is a very useful feature. The hashtag is underlined and clickable. After clicking on it, all messages in the chat containing this hashtag are displayed in the search window.
To add a subject to an email to a non-DC contact, users could place a hashtag at the beginning of a message. Whenever DC detects such a tag in an unencrypted message to one non-DC contact, which is not a reply, it would use it as the subject without the “#.” At the beginning of encrypted messages and unencrypted group messages, a hashtag would simply be sent as part of the message. Of course, this also applies if it is not at the beginning. The subject of received messages in 1:1 chats should also be displayed with a “#” in front of it.
In my opinion, this approach would have the following advantages:
- The UI wouldn’t need to be changed.
- Chats with DC users and non-DC users would look identical, as hashtags can be used everywhere.
- By clicking/tapping the subject, all messages with that subject can be displayed in the search window.
- A hashtag is underlined and thus stands out clearly from the rest of the message.
Things get a bit more difficult when a subject line consists of multiple words. In this case, “_” characters could be used between them. I’ve noticed that Apple Mail even deletes some of these. However, I’m not sure what the criteria are.
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I think “Subject: [all the rest of the text on the first line]” would be preferable: if the first line does not start with “Subject:”, the default subject would be used.
This has the advantage of complying with existing standards for subjects in encrypted mail. It also avoids underscores.
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Yes, that would be possible, but my design goal was to ensure there would be no differences between email chats with non-DC users and regular DC chats. The hashtag feature already exists in DC-Desktop. So, no additional UI elements or commands would be necessary.
I think DC should be able to automatically remove the underscores before sending.
Sorry, I haven’t used DC-Desktop and didn’t know that.
At this point it’s probably easier to fork zulip and make it work with chatmail, zulip has the proper ux regarding groups/threads/subject/this whole thing
This topic should be closed. It is overly broad, and numerous more actionable topics have already been broken out of it and linked back here.