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Use plaintext email

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Re: Use plaintext email

#211

Post by Boulth »

u801e wrote: post #52
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. And a non manually wrapped wrapped plain text is not wrapped at all in certain cases. If the MUA (Mail User Agent) does not soft wrap text, then text without hard wraps is painful to read. This also applies to text that's not meant to be soft wrapped (source code, error message output, log messages, etc.). There is an RFC…

Sadly f=f is not widely supported (Thunderbird is a notable client using it).

Re: Use plaintext email

#212

Post by liquid153 »

snowwrestler wrote: post #175
wyldfire wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Being able to use color, or bold, or italics, makes a difference in communication. It really does. Color, especially helps people find the relevant/critical part.

It's true, in fact here's a good example of someone using color to improve their communication: https://useplaintext.email/

GOT EM!!!

Re: Use plaintext email

#213

Post by Sir_Cmpwn »

zaarn wrote: post #113
Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Mozilla's engine is a giant multi-million lines-of-code ball of C++ and Rust and JavaScript weighing in at nearly 200 MiB - not including dependencies. And what if I don't want to support the browser monoculture? Implementing a new one is a daunting task (nigh impossible), but rendering plaintext is easy peasy.

Mutt is 1 megabyte.

Re: Use plaintext email

#214

Post by Boulth »

stevekemp wrote: post #81
beefhash wrote: post #21

For the convenience of anyone that may consider licensing and language it's written in a relevant part of their choice of software, here's the list of recommended e-mail clients in the submission with licensing and programming language info: - aerc: MIT, Go - alpine: Apache 2.0 (parts 4-clause BSD), C - claws mail: GPLv3, C - Gnus: LGPLv2+, elisp - KMail: GPLv2 (parts GFDLv1.2, parts LGPLv2.1), C++ - mutt: GPLv2, C -…

My own client: lumail, c++, gpl https://github.com/lumail/lumail

It would be great if you inserted a screenshot of your client in action in the README.md. In my experience screenshots have excellent information density when it comes to evaluating software :)

Re: Use plaintext email

#215

Post by esoterica »

Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #206
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…

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 w…

For the vast majority of people html formatting is better and more efficient for their communication needs. Bold and highlighted text, section headers, tables and inline images are all very very standard and useful things to have in emails. These are not niche use cases.

Re: Use plaintext email

#216

Post by [deleted] »

zepolen wrote: post #157
neuronic wrote: post #155

Earlier 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…

[deleted]

Re: Use plaintext email

#217

Post by cortesoft »

u801e wrote: post #147
ubermonkey wrote: post #124

My 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…

> Being able to embed screenshots is awesome. Being able to use color, or bold, or italics, makes a difference in communication. Yet, you cannot do any of that on HN (other than a limited case like italic ). But, we can communicate just fine without those features. I suppose it's really a difference of a read once message versus having a discussion. In a read once message, you can format it like you describe. That's…

And we got along 'just fine' before computers were invented. Should we stop all progress because we don't really 'need' any new stuff we are inventing?

Re: Use plaintext email

#218

Post by Sir_Cmpwn »

neuronic wrote: post #155
u801e wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Being able to embed screenshots is awesome. Being able to use color, or bold, or italics, makes a difference in communication. Yet, you cannot do any of that on HN (other than a limited case like italic ). But, we can communicate just fine without those features. I suppose it's really a difference of a read once message versus having a discussion. In a read once message, you can format it like you describe. That's…

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.

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Re: Use plaintext email

#219

Post by jolmg »

zepolen wrote: post #157
neuronic wrote: post #155

Earlier 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…

> In the end what happens is people use text overlays in the IMAGES in order to reply to each other.

Oh my god. At my work, HR likes their email super-formatted to a degree that's not portably achievable with even hand-written HTML. The solution someone once came up with? Their email consists of a single embedded image the size of a typical monitor. All text, all information is in that image. They also have a requirement for everyone to use their standard format for "professional" signatures in their own mail. Of course, those are also embedded images. In a discussion, with each reply of each person, the corresponding signature image is included.

I wish I could tell them that email only allows for plain text, but of course that's not the case.

Re: Use plaintext email

#220

Post by sterkekoffie »

lawn wrote: post #96
upofadown wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then you are better off using some format that can stand alone as a file such as PDF. If it is a reference document that is intended to be edited on an ongoing basis it is better to use something like a wiki. Having to root around in your email to find a reference document is pretty inefficient and annoying.

We send syntax highlighted code all the time via email at my job. I hope you're not suggesting we should use PDF instead? And no, creating snippets on a wiki is also an extra unnecessary step. Email is just easier and faster.

It might be "easier and faster" to send an email than to, for instance, upload to a dedicated snippet manager, but literally everything after than that is slower and more difficult.
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