6 ms·
> 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
by jve 7y ago
> 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 get me wrong - for high security systems/environments, plaintext is way to go. For everyday life use cases I prefer html. Although with Markdown rendered text I would be pretty happy. And enough for author to cover his post sans the green/red boxes and grey text.
- DarkCrusader2 7y agoThe 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.
- jve 7y agoFair. I like that minimal formatting there anyway. But often I have to communicate via email, report on complex issues, etc. It is nice to have some headings, tables, images in there.
- DarkCrusader2 7y agoAgreed. As much as I like plain text email personally, having inline images etc. is really helpful sometimes.
- mavhc 7y agoThe key is sometimes. Plain text by default, rich text when required. Software that would strip all html out of emails for security would be handy
- u801e 7y agoBefore MIME was common, people used to insert uuencoded data within the email message. IIRC, certain email clients would display the decoded content inline with the surrounding text.
- C1sc0cat 7y agoWhy not use MS Word or some other tool designed for writing documents then ?
- wongarsu 7y agoBut 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.
- upofadown 7y agoThen 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.
- wongarsu 7y agoAll 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.
- throw0101a 7y ago> 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.
- na85 7y agoI'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.
- throw0101a 7y agoJust ran across this: an HTML e-mail that is only a link (i.e., HTML <head> refresh): * https://old.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/ch83sz/why_the_hell_is_sending_html_files_via_email_only/ https://old.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/ch83sz/why_the_he...
- dpau 7y agoha! and i really love the design of this site- just the right amount of design & css styling to elegantly communicate the message..
- DangitBobby 7y agoThat's pretty much a non-sequitur. HTML is better in email as well as "reference documents" according to the opinions of many. You don't like thing. Okay.
- 6c696e7578 7y agoRFC 822 is plaintext. That's a reference document. Don't see why HTML would be an argument for a reference document. In fact, tex is a good format for reference documents, it diff's well and can produce .ps/.pdf outputs among others.
- a3n 7y agoThe 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.
- holy_city 7y agoAm I crazy for using email to send memos? Those serve as reference documents too, while creating a papertrail.
- robenkleene 7y agoEmail 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.
- thatguyagain 7y ago> "Email is supposed to be easy to quote" Since when? I have never heard anyone say this in my entire life. I want emails to look good. So I guess people are different and we can't draw a simple conclusion about what people want from email?
- robenkleene 7y agoI’m not sure what you’re saying here. Is it that you’ve never heard of the concept of quoting a passage of an email? Or are you saying “sure people do that, but it doesn’t matter if it’s easy”?
- mbreese 7y agoOr perhaps the parent commenter is part of the lost generation of email users that never properly used quoted replies in email conversations. And this is not necessarily an comment on the age of the parent commenter, but rather about what email programs were common at the time. I blame Outlook mainly for this, but Gmail hasn’t done much to help here either. The use of quotes in replies is also part of the article and is definitely a better way to go with bottom replies than the current default of top replies.
- setr 7y agoHe means that he’s never heard of it as a “supposed to be”, or rather, a core feature/reason to use email. Which is my experience as well — it happens to be easy to quote. The real quoting that email supports, the reply w/ embedded copy of replied email, is unaffected by html/plaintext choice.
- zczc 7y agoYou can use markdown with https://markdown-here.com/ https://markdown-here.com/. It allows composing emails in markdown and sending email as multipart message with plain text markdown plus rendered html. Discussed in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15646425 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15646425