Is it not ironic that the very website promoting the benefits of plain text, uses a textual medium consisting of bold, underlined, colorized, and other font effects? Something that can only be achieved via HTML enhanced emails!
Use plaintext email
201–210 of 345 posts
Re: Use plaintext email
#202> 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.
> it’s obvious that rich text is difficult to quote
I don't see how. It's just the same as plain text.
Re: Use plaintext email
#203> 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…
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.
The very last clause in that sentence answers a question that I hadn't even thought to ask.
I thought it was very odd for what is essentially a marketing post.
Re: Use plaintext email
#204Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would say that the real performance drain is top posting, which seems to go hand in hand with HTML emails. With top posting, in order to read a mail - especially one that is a few levels deep in a thread - becomes an exercise in jumping back and forth, trying to find context and make sense of who replies to what, finding relevant sentences (often hidden in a mess of signatures). With bottom posting and proper curat…
A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing in email?
> Q. Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
It is not, so long as you first quote the relevant part you are replying to.
At some point you can also trim the tail as you see fit (I don't find it necessary because my mail client does a good enogh job at hiding that part unless I click on a "show wverything" button.
> 2019-07-24 10:50 earthboundkid wrote:
> Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
>> 2019-07-23 23:55 someonelse wrote:
>> A: Top-posting.
>>> 2019-07-23 22:00 first guy wrote:
>>> Q: What is the most annoying thing in email?
Re: Use plaintext email
#205Earlier quoted context omitted.
Communicating just fine is not the same as communicating at optimum. In the analog world, you could just hand over a white, plaintext birthday card. Or you could give one with a motive, color, some doodles and maybe a memorable photograph attached. Which one is more memorable? "It's used by marketing." is not an arguments against it. We have sophisticated spam filters. Update your rules then.
Go and visit a forum where embedded images are allowed and tell me that there is any sort of "optimum" discussion over there. In the end what happens is people use text overlays in the IMAGES in order to reply to each other. Since you edited your response to mention the birthday card: Yea - on the one hand you can leave a boring "Happy Birthday" message with lots of glitter to make it memorable. Or you can make the m…
Some forums actually work a lot better WITH embedded images.
To pick just one example[1]: a lawn forum where people will try to ask a question, or share an experience, and go back and forth trying to describe the details. A photo cuts that pain out and enriches the conversation.
Re: Use plaintext email
#206>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…
Finally back at a computer, can reply to this in full now:
>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)
It would be difficult to argue that it's not at least more difficult to phish people with plain text.
>Only if you use an ancient and outdated client that doesn't block external resources by default or proxies them over another server.
This works until you click any link in the typical marketing email, or click "show images" to make the email readable. Remember that you have to train these careful behaviors into non-technical end-users.
>You can make them more accessible than Text though because you can prevent the screenreader from trying to read out the link or irrelevant information
This only sounds useful for spam or marketing emails (which are the same thing 99 times out of 100).
>It feels a bit like complaining that people on the highway drive so fast that you can't properly merge into the rightmost lane with your oldtimer car.
This is an uncharitable interpretation. We don't use these email clients because we're old fogeys, but because they're better and more efficient for our workflow and needs.
Re: Use plaintext email
#207Earlier quoted context omitted.
Neither you nor the poster provide a reason why. Why is it better? How does plain text make it faster to respond? Or even faster to read?
images loading..2% images loading..15% images loading..29% images loading..42% images loading..58% images loading..74% images loading..89% images loading..100% ____________________________________ | | | O O | | O | | \_/ | | MY LOGO | | My catchphrase | | | | | | | |------------------------------------| | | | Hi josho! | | | | This is why it's slower to read! | | | |____________________________________|
Your comment is plain text and it's terrible to read. So if anything, you're making the opposite point!
Re: Use plaintext email
#208My god, this is never going to die, is it? I mean, I get it. There are some things about plaintext that are nice, or that really appeal to the kind of people who read HN. I used to have arguments about this, too -- but it was 20 years ago. Today, the ship has fucking SAILED. And you know what? It's GREAT. I send formatted email constantly -- and they're better for it. Being able to embed screenshots is awesome. Being…
I consider this to be more like a polemic to shift the overton window of acceptable email restrictions.
Probably much of what we enable in email could be restricted without loss of actual useful features. Each feature adds attack surface, complexity, and compatibility concerns that can be avoided by using the simplest possible subset of features.
Re: Use plaintext email
#209Thanks, I apparently found out that Claws Mail had Windows version. Default Windows E-mail client does not support text mode at all and I prefer text mode, so I'll try it.
Re: Use plaintext email
#210My god, this is never going to die, is it? I mean, I get it. There are some things about plaintext that are nice, or that really appeal to the kind of people who read HN. I used to have arguments about this, too -- but it was 20 years ago. Today, the ship has fucking SAILED. And you know what? It's GREAT. I send formatted email constantly -- and they're better for it. Being able to embed screenshots is awesome. Being…
It won't die, because the argument has the same merit today that it always has. That being said, I think it's useful to attach images to an email (not necessarily embed them in the content of the email, but attach them for sure).
IMO HTML email is worse today than it's ever been. Often when I get an HTML email it takes me longer to parse it. On the bright side, the presence of HTML is a decent indicator of a marketing email that can safely be ignored.