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Use plaintext email

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Re: Use plaintext email

#41

Post by zaarn »

e12e wrote: post #24
zaarn wrote: post #11

>HTML as a vector for phishing I would disagree, You can make Text-only links look fairly harmless too. The issue is more often that people do not look at all, even in text-mail, what the link points to, not that they can't see it (plus you can hover and the browser still shows the URL once you open it) >Privacy invasion and tracking Only if you use an ancient and outdated client that doesn't block external resources…

>> Some clients can't display HTML emails at all > Most mail clients will usually bundle a text-version of the mail, some MTAs also do this on their own. This assumes there is a proper text part (one that actually includes the content of the mail body).

Unless you violate accessibility laws or your email client is shit, there is a text part or the HTML part is screen-reader compatible.

Re: Use plaintext email

#42

Post by Tomte »

Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #32
Tomte wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not what Show HN is for. I don't submit my articles that way. It's for things (apps etc.) you can try out. Not for essays.

You can apply the information on this page to configuring your mail client (and should!). It's also intended to serve as a one stop resource for cataloguing plaintext support in most, if not all, mail clients, in the future.

Still no Show HN. You've been here long enough to know that.

Re: Use plaintext email

#43

Post by davidcollantes »

ignaloidas wrote: post #34
davidcollantes wrote: post #26

I was always a strong advocate for plain text emails. Because for many years my mail client was Mutt, I saw everything plain text. Now that clients are graphical, it bothers me to know others might be reading my plain text emails with a "Times New Roman" font, and not a monospaced (as god intended it to be). So, to avoid that, I use HTML on my emails. Yes, it makes them a bit bigger. Yes, they go against my very beli…

Have you thought that others may not want to see your emails as you intended?

End recipients can always overwrite, no?

Re: Use plaintext email

#44

Post by cyphar »

naikrovek wrote: post #30
e12e wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Some clients can't display HTML emails at all > Most mail clients will usually bundle a text-version of the mail, some MTAs also do this on their own. This assumes there is a proper text part (one that actually includes the content of the mail body).

That does not seem like much of an assumption; all modern mail clients that I am aware of do this.

The problem isn't the clients, it's the senders. And as someone who uses Mutt, the vast majority of HTML emails don't have usable plaintext versions.

Re: Use plaintext email

#45

Post by jraph »

Some people sending plain text mails also wrap them manually.

If my window is small (maybe because I am using a small screen), the text is painful to read. And a non manually wrapped plain text is not wrapped at all in some cases.

By all means, send me plain text mails, it will be lighter for my self-hosted inbox, but don't wrap them manually.

If you are going to abuse /this/ kind of `formatting`, however, you are making your mail harder to read for me. These are tags anyway, just not HTML tags. I'd prefer you use the real formatting that is correctly handled in most cases, but I will adapt.

> There are two main types of emails on the internet: plaintext and HTML. The former is strongly preferred

You will need to back this up because this is not what I observe.

My email client takes care of my privacy and my security, and you can use it too if you are concerned, it's a cross platform maintained free software. It's okay.

My problems with HTML emails is colors: if you want to use something like a night mode, you will see emails with hard coded white background and black texts, or worse, only black texts. You may be able to ignore colors but people will assume you can see them. Maybe an extension like dark background on light texts when using a browser for reading emails who do the trick, but I don't.

Re: Use plaintext email

#46

Post by Hitton »

The part about ProtonMail and Tutanota seems pretty biased. I would like to hear how the author suggests that they should implement IMAP and SMTP without compromising the encryption.

It sounds like the author prefers dubious advantages to real improved security.

That's quite ridiculous considering that according to him HTML emails are:

>"... a security nightmare, are mostly used for advertising to you and tracking you, are less accessible for many users, and don't offer anything especially great for it."

Re: Use plaintext email

#48

Post by virtualritz »

atombender wrote: post #36

The problems with HTML email originate in the days when clients like Outlook would produce horrendous, non-responsive HTML that were basically entire embedded web pages; the idea that the sender should be able to dictate the font of an email is a bit ridiculous, not to mention the layout, and the result was often broken depending on the email client. Emails aren't web pages, but they do benefit from formatting (bold,…

"After all, everyone has their plaintext style"

This is counter to my own experience. I am using (plain text) email since 27 years. Including inline quoting and avoiding top posting at all costs.

People used bold (not sure how to render a '*' in HN) /italic/ and _underscore_ consistently on lists, newsgroups and -- rarely, as seldomly needed -- in private correspondence.

I learned how to do this by example. Everyone being very disciplined about this in the 90's still.

This started deteriorating rapidly in the wake of eternal September [1] and Outlook becoming the standard client in the corporate world, using HTML as default. Personally I blame Outlook for HTML email hell foremost.

It is very simple to display plain text email, omitting aforementioned formatters and applying them. The same goes for displaying in a proportional font (detecting intended indentations from the original and replicating them with tabs, on the fly).

Using such formatters is just another (and not even alien) form of inline markup. Actually the very one that inspired markdown, ReST, etc.

The only reason people use HTML email is that it's the default. Not that it's better in any way.

The average user simply doesn't know any better.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September

Re: Use plaintext email

#49

Post by ignaloidas »

davidcollantes wrote: post #43
ignaloidas wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you thought that others may not want to see your emails as you intended?

End recipients can always overwrite, no?

overwriting HTML styles is harder than setting how to format plaintext. HTML styling has order of magnitude more customization options than plaintext, which has three that I can think of: font, font size, tab width. Almost all clients have customization for plaintext, I haven't seen one that can override HTML customizations.

Re: Use plaintext email

#50

Post by robenkleene »

jve wrote: post #8

> Rich text features desirable for end users include things like inline images, bold or italicized text, and so on. However, the tradeoff isn't worth it. Images can simply be attached to your email, and you can employ things like asterisks , /slashes/, _underscores_, or UPPERCASE for emphasis. Well, why bother writing his own post in rich text then? He has headings, bold, links, grey font at the bottom, image. Don't…

Email is supposed to be easy to quote, just like you’ve used a block quote in your comment. I assume it’s obvious that rich text is difficult to quote, but a quick explanation is that the invisible formatting characters used to represent rich text behave inconsistently when re-contextualized for a quote.
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