3 ms·

I have never seen an email with a table in it, HTML or not. Inline images are not useful, just attach them. Leave your giant signature with your company logo a

I have never seen an email with a table in it, HTML or not. Inline images are not useful, just attach them. Leave your giant signature with your company logo at the door. What's left is section headers and bold text. Use asterisks for emphasis and # for section headers and you can communicate quite effectively. We seem to manage pretty well here on Hacker News without most of these features, wouldn't you say?

hyperpape 7y ago
I routinely insert org-mode tables into emails I send at work (now that I think about it, that's a little funny, given that I'm consistently pro-HTML-email in these threads).
esoterica 7y ago
It takes a special kind of narcissism to say “I don’t use tables, therefore no one could possible have any use for them.” Attached images are worse for readability. Instead of writing “blabla refer to attached image 3 blabla now look at image 4”, it’s far more convenient to just insert inline images at the locations where they are relevant. Instead of using stupid hacky workarounds for italics and headers why not use ACTUAL italics and headers? Your entire argument revolves around the fact that you have a narrow minded, arbritrary, and old fashioned view of what the platonic ideal of an email is supposed to be. You can keep being the old man who yells and clouds if you want, no one cares if you get personally offended by the concept of section headers in emails, we’re going to keep doing it.
- Sir_Cmpwn 7y ago
  Couldn't help but notice that your ad hominem attack was conducted entirely in plain text.
  - esoterica 7y ago
    It was not. The HN page contains html. Notice how the comments are in a different font and color from the metadata above each comment? Notice how that improves readability?
    - u801e 7y ago
      Downvoted comments are less readable due to decreased contrast (though I assume that's intentional so people well skip over them instead of responding).
jefftk 7y ago
I often use inline images in emails, for the same reason I put images inline in other writing. I recently wrote an email summarizing some debugging I had done so someone else could pick it up. It looked like: text describing steps image of graph link to graph source more text another graph link to graph source etc We're all using email clients that display messages like this well, and it makes communicating complex ideas much faster. I'd give up HTML email if I could still have format=flowed and inline images, but that's not what's on offer.
zaarn 7y ago
HTML mails are routinely formatted using tables since that is what most mail clients correctly understand, it's essentially the design standard there. People manage on HN but on reddit people freely use these formattings fairly regularly and nobody seems to complain about that. Heck, using the markdown standard for formatting is already going away from text/plain and towards text/markdown, which isn't strictly plaintext.

hyperpape 7y ago

I routinely insert org-mode tables into emails I send at work (now that I think about it, that's a little funny, given that I'm consistently pro-HTML-email in these threads).

esoterica 7y ago

It takes a special kind of narcissism to say “I don’t use tables, therefore no one could possible have any use for them.” Attached images are worse for readability. Instead of writing “blabla refer to attached image 3 blabla now look at image 4”, it’s far more convenient to just insert inline images at the locations where they are relevant. Instead of using stupid hacky workarounds for italics and headers why not use ACTUAL italics and headers? Your entire argument revolves around the fact that you have a narrow minded, arbritrary, and old fashioned view of what the platonic ideal of an email is supposed to be. You can keep being the old man who yells and clouds if you want, no one cares if you get personally offended by the concept of section headers in emails, we’re going to keep doing it.

Sir_Cmpwn 7y ago
Couldn't help but notice that your ad hominem attack was conducted entirely in plain text.
- esoterica 7y ago
  It was not. The HN page contains html. Notice how the comments are in a different font and color from the metadata above each comment? Notice how that improves readability?
  - u801e 7y ago
    Downvoted comments are less readable due to decreased contrast (though I assume that's intentional so people well skip over them instead of responding).

jefftk 7y ago

I often use inline images in emails, for the same reason I put images inline in other writing. I recently wrote an email summarizing some debugging I had done so someone else could pick it up. It looked like: text describing steps image of graph link to graph source more text another graph link to graph source etc We're all using email clients that display messages like this well, and it makes communicating complex ideas much faster. I'd give up HTML email if I could still have format=flowed and inline images, but that's not what's on offer.

zaarn 7y ago

HTML mails are routinely formatted using tables since that is what most mail clients correctly understand, it's essentially the design standard there. People manage on HN but on reddit people freely use these formattings fairly regularly and nobody seems to complain about that. Heck, using the markdown standard for formatting is already going away from text/plain and towards text/markdown, which isn't strictly plaintext.