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What I would really like is to end up in a situation where email clients all support text/markdown. It really hits the sweet spot between plain text and HTML. I

What I would really like is to end up in a situation where email clients all support text/markdown. It really hits the sweet spot between plain text and HTML. It has enough structure to show a nice outline, and the triple back-tick syntax is great for marking bits of text as code. All without specifying how everything should look. You can read it as unformatted text, or let the mail client format everything in a style you like. This is sort-of like HTML without CSS (using the client's default stylesheet), but also very well readable as unformatted text, and free from the abuse of HTML email. Alas. More and more companies are giving up on plain text email (even though this is required by the standard), and simply send you a hyperlink to click if you have plain text as your viewing preference for email.

kbenson 10y ago
I think all it would take is Gmail adopting it to start a chain reaction, and Gmail adoption actually seems somewhat plausible to me. Google has a habit of implementing things aimed a bit more at power users (while also omitting things that a a bit more middle-of-the-road). I could totally see some internal project that does this for Gmail making it to the public.
chriswarbo 10y ago
> What I would really like is to end up in a situation where email clients all support text/markdown. I don't understand; markdown is text. If you send markdown emails right now, what's the problem? Admittedly I might be biased, since I read mail as plain text in Emacs, but surely plain text emails will display in all mail clients?
- dTal 10y ago
  Presumably, a Markdown-enabled email client would display a pretty-printed version of an email it thinks is in Markdown. The output, not the input. Markdown is no more text than HTML is. Which is to say, it is, but it also has more structure you can teach software to interpret intelligently. The only difference is that Markdown is 1) more human readable and 2) less standardised. I think reifying our social conventions for conveying formatting over plaintext so that software can understand it is an excellent initiative.
- Freak_NL 10y ago
  > If you send markdown emails right now, what's the problem? If you structure plain text emails with MarkDown nothing is wrong per se, but if clients can also highlight (in a text editor like plain text view) or format (in a HTML like view), than there is significant added value for a lot of users, without the downsides of HTML email.
bhaak 10y ago
> What I would really like is to end up in a situation where email clients all support text/markdown. It really hits the sweet spot between plain text and HTML. It has enough structure to show a nice outline, and the triple back-tick syntax is great for marking bits of text as code. Then we would have come full circle. A markup language that has been at least inspired if not derived from decade old usenet/mail conventions would be back where it started from. > [...] and free from the abuse of HTML email. Are you sure? The advantage of text/plain in mail is that I see every link as it is and no resources are loaded from external sources. With markdown support in mail clients, we might be back at early HTML support. Link destinations would be unknowable again. > Alas. More and more companies are giving up on plain text email (even though this is required by the standard), If it's not plain text, it has to declare a mime type (how would the mail client know how to render it?) but I don't think plain text section is mandatory. > and simply send you a hyperlink to click if you have plain text as your viewing preference for email. Go tell them, and you can quote me on that, that they are stupid. If my mail client doesn't render text/html and prefers the text/plain sections that is because it is configured that way. I know of no mail client that isn't able to handle HTML.
- dsr_ 10y ago
  mail. mailx. elm. pine. mh. nmh. You're welcome.
  - bhaak 10y ago
    I said "handle". Especially Unix programs almost always have a way of going beyond a programs limitations. Elm and pine support mailcap files. IIRC (n)mh does as well via mimeview (or is that only the GNU version?). But a program where scripting is a part of its core design, there will certainly be ways of calling an external program for converting HTML to be viewed. Mail and mailx, do they even support mime types? AFAIK they don't but then you just need to set up PAGER with an intelligent enough program I guess. Now if you said telnet or netcat, I would truly have been at a loss.
    - dsr_ 10y ago
inopinatus 10y ago
For transactional email I like liquid templated markdown. We render each through liquid, then send the resulting markdown in the text/plain part, and render it with redcarpet and github's sanitizer for the text/html part. We used to downsample from HTML to plaintext with many irksome artefacts arising. These look a lot better. It does oblige a certain discipline on the part of template writers, I consider that a good thing.
mderazon 10y ago
Have you tried Markdown Here ? http://markdown-here.com/ http://markdown-here.com/ I use it on almost every email. It is really great.
- takeda 10y ago
  That's just a hack though it just generates html based on the markdown you type. It for example won't help me with reading emails in console :/ BTW: Things like this makes me wonder if I'm the only one who still uses MTA. If there was a defined standard text/markdown the emails would simply be sent in markdown which could be nicely rendered in GUI, be readable in plain text and also safe unlike html.

kbenson 10y ago

I think all it would take is Gmail adopting it to start a chain reaction, and Gmail adoption actually seems somewhat plausible to me. Google has a habit of implementing things aimed a bit more at power users (while also omitting things that a a bit more middle-of-the-road). I could totally see some internal project that does this for Gmail making it to the public.

chriswarbo 10y ago

> What I would really like is to end up in a situation where email clients all support text/markdown. I don't understand; markdown is text. If you send markdown emails right now, what's the problem? Admittedly I might be biased, since I read mail as plain text in Emacs, but surely plain text emails will display in all mail clients?

dTal 10y ago
Presumably, a Markdown-enabled email client would display a pretty-printed version of an email it thinks is in Markdown. The output, not the input. Markdown is no more text than HTML is. Which is to say, it is, but it also has more structure you can teach software to interpret intelligently. The only difference is that Markdown is 1) more human readable and 2) less standardised. I think reifying our social conventions for conveying formatting over plaintext so that software can understand it is an excellent initiative.
Freak_NL 10y ago
> If you send markdown emails right now, what's the problem? If you structure plain text emails with MarkDown nothing is wrong per se, but if clients can also highlight (in a text editor like plain text view) or format (in a HTML like view), than there is significant added value for a lot of users, without the downsides of HTML email.

bhaak 10y ago

> What I would really like is to end up in a situation where email clients all support text/markdown. It really hits the sweet spot between plain text and HTML. It has enough structure to show a nice outline, and the triple back-tick syntax is great for marking bits of text as code. Then we would have come full circle. A markup language that has been at least inspired if not derived from decade old usenet/mail conventions would be back where it started from. > [...] and free from the abuse of HTML email. Are you sure? The advantage of text/plain in mail is that I see every link as it is and no resources are loaded from external sources. With markdown support in mail clients, we might be back at early HTML support. Link destinations would be unknowable again. > Alas. More and more companies are giving up on plain text email (even though this is required by the standard), If it's not plain text, it has to declare a mime type (how would the mail client know how to render it?) but I don't think plain text section is mandatory. > and simply send you a hyperlink to click if you have plain text as your viewing preference for email. Go tell them, and you can quote me on that, that they are stupid. If my mail client doesn't render text/html and prefers the text/plain sections that is because it is configured that way. I know of no mail client that isn't able to handle HTML.

dsr_ 10y ago
mail. mailx. elm. pine. mh. nmh. You're welcome.
- bhaak 10y ago
  I said "handle". Especially Unix programs almost always have a way of going beyond a programs limitations. Elm and pine support mailcap files. IIRC (n)mh does as well via mimeview (or is that only the GNU version?). But a program where scripting is a part of its core design, there will certainly be ways of calling an external program for converting HTML to be viewed. Mail and mailx, do they even support mime types? AFAIK they don't but then you just need to set up PAGER with an intelligent enough program I guess. Now if you said telnet or netcat, I would truly have been at a loss.
  - dsr_ 10y ago

inopinatus 10y ago

For transactional email I like liquid templated markdown. We render each through liquid, then send the resulting markdown in the text/plain part, and render it with redcarpet and github's sanitizer for the text/html part. We used to downsample from HTML to plaintext with many irksome artefacts arising. These look a lot better. It does oblige a certain discipline on the part of template writers, I consider that a good thing.

mderazon 10y ago

Have you tried Markdown Here ? http://markdown-here.com/ http://markdown-here.com/ I use it on almost every email. It is really great.

takeda 10y ago
That's just a hack though it just generates html based on the markdown you type. It for example won't help me with reading emails in console :/ BTW: Things like this makes me wonder if I'm the only one who still uses MTA. If there was a defined standard text/markdown the emails would simply be sent in markdown which could be nicely rendered in GUI, be readable in plain text and also safe unlike html.