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Use plaintext email

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Re: Use plaintext email

#111

Post by taneq »

wongarsu wrote: post #19
DarkCrusader2 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The page footer might interest you. It directly answers your question. Quoting "But if plaintext is so good, why is this page written in HTML?" This is a reference document, not an email, you twit.

But emails can be reference documents too! In fact I would argue most work emails that are longer than a few lines are a reference document of some sort.

Exactly, work mailboxes are a treasure trove of automatically-archived information. I'd argue that these days, emails form more of a "knowledge base" than any other single repository of information for most organisations.

Re: Use plaintext email

#112

Post by na85 »

throw0101a wrote: post #88
wongarsu wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of the reasons given against HTML emails hold at least equally well against PDF: it's a vector for phishing and tracking, ripe with client vulnerabilities, less accessible and not displayable on a terminal. For me as a reader having to read both an E-Mail and the attached PDF is also annoying, and many people will simply skip reading the PDF.

> For me as a reader having to read both an E-Mail and the attached PDF is also annoying, and many people will simply skip reading the PDF. See also embedding (e.g.) a JPEG in a Word document and then attaching that Word document to an e-mail.

I've seen so many Word or PPT documents with a single hyperlink in them, uploaded to SharePoint with filenames like "process_manual_2013_v3.2.doc"...

Ugh.

Re: Use plaintext email

#113

Post by zaarn »

Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #86
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Privacy invasion and tracking Only if you use an ancient and outdated client that doesn't block external resources…

I'll address more of your comment later, but for now let's start here: >Only an issue if the client rolls their own HTML renderer. Outlook uses the IE Trident Engine, Thunderbird uses Firefox' engine, Gmail transforms using the Chromium engine internally. That means the email client is usually as secure as the respective browser, unless you use a mail client that rolls their own engine. This is not true. You can't ju…

That stuff is actually not that hard, mozilla's engine has compile flags for that stuff and the patches you have to make are minimal. There are a few methods for runtime restrictions too, they're quite extensive in their capabilities and sufficient for sandboxing a mail.

Re: Use plaintext email

#114

Post by cpbotha »

mgulick wrote: post #77

I'm surprised by the recommendation to use format=flowed. I set up thunderbird a while back to use the recommendations from the LKML: https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/process/email-clients... . Doesn't format=flowed mangle patches? I've also disabled wrapping (as recommended in that document), however I'm not a big fan of it. I do think that plain text wrapped at 72 or 80 characters looks much nicer. I wish thu…

If you do format=flowed correctly, then code is not mangled.

However, there is a higher risk (than with hard-wrapped) that users can mangle code with format=flowed.

Re: Use plaintext email

#115

Post by upofadown »

jraph wrote: post #45

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 ma…

>If my window is small (maybe because I am using a small screen), the text is painful to read.

If your screen is so small that it can't display 80 characters across then pretty much anything you look at it with is going to look odd. Any HTML formatting such as tables will also be painful to read.

Re: Use plaintext email

#116

Post by ddevault »

tqwhite wrote: post #83

What a load of bollocks. The arguments against come down to, 'you are an idiot who can't figure out phishing links' and, well, that's it. Something about marketing emails. Stupid. Luddite. I'm surprised they don't insist you use a monospace type face in your email reader to give it that late eighties feel. I have always used HTML email, even when it was new and poorly supported. I want people who read my email to see…

People who fall for phishing are not idiots. Even technical people can be fooled by clever spear phishing.

Re: Use plaintext email

#117

Post by mlang23 »

zaarn wrote: post #65
mlang23 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

However, a significant portion of HTML mail I receive happily violates "accessibility laws" and omit to provide a text-only part. I know that, since I actually rely on accessibility to do my daily work.

Screen readers should be able to deal with HTML-only mails for the most part, otherwise you should send the sender of that mail a reminder about those laws.

Are you actually a user of accessibility? To me, it doesn't feel like you are. If I am right, please refrain from patronizing people who actually do. In my book, you have no idea how horrible the situation has become over the last 5 to 10 years. Accessibility used to be a thing, yes. These days, it is mostly a happy accident.

Re: Use plaintext email

#118

Post by ddevault »

tjoff wrote: post #106
kungtotte wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe you should read the entire page? It specifically warns against top posting and quoting the entire email you're replying to. So if people followed this advice you wouldn't have to scroll a kilometer for attachments (unless someone actually wrote an email that long).

I don't know if I've ever seen bottom-posting in my life. They have particular weak arguments against that as well. It is very useful when forwarding a message or including someone else as cc.

When forwarding a message you should include the thread as RFC 2822 attachments (RFC number recited from memory, may be wrong). Your mail client should make this easy for you.

Re: Use plaintext email

#119

Post by Sir_Cmpwn »

bandali wrote: post #74
Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm on mobile so I can't give you an adequte response, but I can link you to a previous commment I wrote on the subject... Or I would, but pasting seems to be broken on my phone as well. If anyone can search HN for "Sir_Cmpwn Protonmail" and link the relevant comment I'd appreciate it very much.

This one, I believe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18008123

Thank you!

Re: Use plaintext email

#120

Post by Sir_Cmpwn »

ignaloidas wrote: post #97
mgulick wrote: post #77

I'm surprised by the recommendation to use format=flowed. I set up thunderbird a while back to use the recommendations from the LKML: https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/process/email-clients... . Doesn't format=flowed mangle patches? I've also disabled wrapping (as recommended in that document), however I'm not a big fan of it. I do think that plain text wrapped at 72 or 80 characters looks much nicer. I wish thu…

Now that page recommends using git send-email, on which the author also made a tutorial: https://git-send-email.io

Thanks for the link - this is indeed my stance, I don't think people should be pasting patches into their daily MUA.
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