5 ms·

I can't think of a single instance where that happened. Do you have some apps generating broken messages?

by ori_b 6y ago

kleiba 6y ago
I'm amazed that you haven't had that experience yet. Years ago, when the web was less commonly used, it was pretty much frowned upon to send HTML emails. These days, it's almost the opposite: people asks "what's wrong with you" when you use a text-only email client (setting).
- leephillips 6y ago
  I use mutt, never send html emails; nobody has ever commented on this, in over 20 years.
  - jlokier 6y ago
    I use Mutt too. Although nobody has commented on my mails, I know some people read them on mobile, and because plain text is formatted for an 80-column terminal, it doesn't reflow nicely on their mobile devices so they have to scroll side-to-side to read my message. I think people don't know that's because I use Mutt, but a hard-to-read mail is not an impression I want to convey sometimes. Also, sometimes my mails render in Courier font for some people when regular HTML mails show up in Arial, just because of the content type. So if possible I'd like to write Markdown or similar and have that auto-formatted to HTML mail before sending. Not sure if there's a good way to do that in Mutt.
    - toothbrush 6y ago
      It's funny this should come up on HN today, because just this week out of nowhere i thought i'd try Mutt again (after having been a Mutt user since mid-2000s, but switching to mu4e for the last ±5 years). What i used to do back in the day, and appeared to work fine when i tested this weekend, is so-called flowed mode. [1] I think it's a controversial feature, because it's a brittle hack, but anecdotally an email i sent this weekend as a test displayed fine on an iPhone. And indeed, i'm totally with you on wanting to use/send text email but not look like a freak with weirdly broken 80-char lines in paragraphs. 1. https://rinzewind.org/blog-en/2017/a-small-trick-for-sending-flowed-mail-in-mutt-with-vim.html https://rinzewind.org/blog-en/2017/a-small-trick-for-sending...
    - leephillips 6y ago
      Interesting point. I can only do very limited testing, but I just sent an email with one very long line from mutt on my laptop to my gmail address. The long line was not broken, and the display flowed perfectly on the gmail client on Android. I think you should be able to use a hook in Mutt to process the markdown to HTML (using Pandoc) before sending. I've never tried anything like this—it has interesting possibilities.
    - DNied 6y ago
      It's entirely possible to send mail as format=flowed plain text, so that messages will rewrap nicely on any screen. I do it all the time with Mutt, it's actually very easy.
      - jlokier 6y ago
        I know about format=flowed. But does that actually solve the problem? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20514314 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20514314 > The suggestion to use `format=flowed` doesn’t help, as the standard is ill-supported: https://fastmail.blog/2016/12/17/format-flowed/ https://fastmail.blog/2016/12/17/format-flowed/ I’ve researched the issue far and wide and the only way to have responsive, nicely wrapped emails is using HTML. https://cpbotha.net/2016/09/27/thunderbird-support-of-rfc-3676-formatflowed-is-half-broken/ https://cpbotha.net/2016/09/27/thunderbird-support-of-rfc-36... > Update on 2019-07-16 The current GMail web-ui ignores format=flowed and renders such emails with hard linebreaks everywhere. Thank you Google for violating yet more email standards. Most people I correspond with where I care about my mail looking "normal" to them seem to use Gmail (about 30-50%), then Apple Mail, Outlook or Thunderbird.
        leephillips 6y ago
        format=flowed does not solve the problem, but you don’t have to resort to HTML. This guy¹ has the right idea: just make each paragraph in your email a single long line (but no more than 998 characters). The idea that we need to break lines at 78 characters, or whatever, is false. Long lines will be wrapped responsively in any sane client, so the reader will have a good experience. [1]https://www.arp242.net/email-wrapping.html https://www.arp242.net/email-wrapping.html
        jlokier 6y ago
        One of the complaints I've had is that my mail had to be horizontally scrolled to be read. One long line sounds likely to make the problem for that person worse not better! That was a while ago though. Clients may have changed. I'd love to know if someone has put the time into cross-platform tests for this sort of thing. The only thing I'm completely confident of at the moment is that multipart/mixed text+HTML works for every client.
- wazoox 6y ago
  I use Claws, never ever sent an HTML email, and nobody complained so far.
  - stjohnswarts 6y ago
    Nobody really cares at any of the places I've worked either. I'm usually using company computers and one of the first things I do in the email client is set it to text
upofadown 6y ago
I had a case where someone crossed out a word in the HTML version but the client just left the word in for the text version. Slight hilarity ensued.
- leephillips 6y ago
  This will happen for some text-based html renderers if the cross-out was done with CSS. But if it was done with <del>, it should work.

I can't think of a single instance where that happened. Do you have some apps generating broken messages?

by ori_b 6y ago

I can't think of a single instance where that happened. Do you have some apps generating broken messages?

I'm amazed that you haven't had that experience yet. Years ago, when the web was less commonly used, it was pretty much frowned upon to send HTML emails. These days, it's almost the opposite: people asks "what's wrong with you" when you use a text-only email client (setting).

leephillips 6y ago
I use mutt, never send html emails; nobody has ever commented on this, in over 20 years.
- jlokier 6y ago
  I use Mutt too. Although nobody has commented on my mails, I know some people read them on mobile, and because plain text is formatted for an 80-column terminal, it doesn't reflow nicely on their mobile devices so they have to scroll side-to-side to read my message. I think people don't know that's because I use Mutt, but a hard-to-read mail is not an impression I want to convey sometimes. Also, sometimes my mails render in Courier font for some people when regular HTML mails show up in Arial, just because of the content type. So if possible I'd like to write Markdown or similar and have that auto-formatted to HTML mail before sending. Not sure if there's a good way to do that in Mutt.
  - toothbrush 6y ago
    It's funny this should come up on HN today, because just this week out of nowhere i thought i'd try Mutt again (after having been a Mutt user since mid-2000s, but switching to mu4e for the last ±5 years). What i used to do back in the day, and appeared to work fine when i tested this weekend, is so-called flowed mode. [1] I think it's a controversial feature, because it's a brittle hack, but anecdotally an email i sent this weekend as a test displayed fine on an iPhone. And indeed, i'm totally with you on wanting to use/send text email but not look like a freak with weirdly broken 80-char lines in paragraphs. 1. https://rinzewind.org/blog-en/2017/a-small-trick-for-sending-flowed-mail-in-mutt-with-vim.html https://rinzewind.org/blog-en/2017/a-small-trick-for-sending...
  - leephillips 6y ago
    Interesting point. I can only do very limited testing, but I just sent an email with one very long line from mutt on my laptop to my gmail address. The long line was not broken, and the display flowed perfectly on the gmail client on Android. I think you should be able to use a hook in Mutt to process the markdown to HTML (using Pandoc) before sending. I've never tried anything like this—it has interesting possibilities.
  - DNied 6y ago
    It's entirely possible to send mail as format=flowed plain text, so that messages will rewrap nicely on any screen. I do it all the time with Mutt, it's actually very easy.
    - jlokier 6y ago
      I know about format=flowed. But does that actually solve the problem? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20514314 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20514314 > The suggestion to use `format=flowed` doesn’t help, as the standard is ill-supported: https://fastmail.blog/2016/12/17/format-flowed/ https://fastmail.blog/2016/12/17/format-flowed/ I’ve researched the issue far and wide and the only way to have responsive, nicely wrapped emails is using HTML. https://cpbotha.net/2016/09/27/thunderbird-support-of-rfc-3676-formatflowed-is-half-broken/ https://cpbotha.net/2016/09/27/thunderbird-support-of-rfc-36... > Update on 2019-07-16 The current GMail web-ui ignores format=flowed and renders such emails with hard linebreaks everywhere. Thank you Google for violating yet more email standards. Most people I correspond with where I care about my mail looking "normal" to them seem to use Gmail (about 30-50%), then Apple Mail, Outlook or Thunderbird.
      - leephillips 6y ago
        format=flowed does not solve the problem, but you don’t have to resort to HTML. This guy¹ has the right idea: just make each paragraph in your email a single long line (but no more than 998 characters). The idea that we need to break lines at 78 characters, or whatever, is false. Long lines will be wrapped responsively in any sane client, so the reader will have a good experience. [1]https://www.arp242.net/email-wrapping.html https://www.arp242.net/email-wrapping.html
        jlokier 6y ago
        One of the complaints I've had is that my mail had to be horizontally scrolled to be read. One long line sounds likely to make the problem for that person worse not better! That was a while ago though. Clients may have changed. I'd love to know if someone has put the time into cross-platform tests for this sort of thing. The only thing I'm completely confident of at the moment is that multipart/mixed text+HTML works for every client.
wazoox 6y ago
I use Claws, never ever sent an HTML email, and nobody complained so far.
- stjohnswarts 6y ago
  Nobody really cares at any of the places I've worked either. I'm usually using company computers and one of the first things I do in the email client is set it to text

upofadown 6y ago

I had a case where someone crossed out a word in the HTML version but the client just left the word in for the text version. Slight hilarity ensued.

leephillips 6y ago
This will happen for some text-based html renderers if the cross-out was done with CSS. But if it was done with <del>, it should work.