7 ms·

Html email is a pox. I set my email clients to use RTF as it’s simpler, more consistent, and one doesn’t send huge email messages full of utterly useless crap (

Html email is a pox. I set my email clients to use RTF as it’s simpler, more consistent, and one doesn’t send huge email messages full of utterly useless crap (otherwise known as html tags and stuff). I’ve been using email for 40 years and has been perennially a problem of inconsistent email rendering since html became a format option. It was however a highly reliable and simple indicator of spam and junk. IF format = HTML then isJunk. Nowadays with the mindless guzzling at the web junk firehose html email is now ubiquitous and consistent in rendering it seems. But With no improvement in copy or relevance. But it does have bling!

lionkor 4y ago
I send most of my emails as plaintext - have yet to find a problem with it.
- ornornor 4y ago
  The “problem” is that you can’t embed trackers, images for tracking, and other marketing crap.
  - lucumo 4y ago
    Yes. Famously, this is why stuff on paper ever only uses a single font with empty line paragraph separators, and nothing else.
    - harryvederci 4y ago
      I thought paper was deprecated?
      - zx8080 4y ago
        Also pens and pencils. Who cares about that since we have chatgpt now!
    - imgabe 4y ago
      Prior to computers most business correspondence would be typewritten in essentially the same font with little or no graphics, maybe a logo on the letterhead if you’re really fancy. That seemed to work fine.
      - zamnos 4y ago
        Ah yes. Prior to computers there was no such thing as art, and then before the invention of color, everything was black and white.
        imgabe 4y ago
        The topic was email. Email does not need to be art.
        lucumo 4y ago
        https://images.indianahistory.org/digital/collection/m0399/id/31463 https://images.indianahistory.org/digital/collection/m0399/i... Even in this letter from 1950, there is: - bold type - underlining - different text alignments - a table It's done shittily, but it's done. It also took forever, which is why they had to fill large rooms with typists.
        imgabe 4y ago
        You can do all that with plain text, except for the bold.
        lucumo 4y ago
        You can emulate them imperfectly. Underlining will use much more space with dashes. So much so that the spacing adds to the emphasis. And you can't use it in running text. Underlining with underscores OTOH is hard to read and has less emphasis than normal underlining. Alignment can be done more or less correctly, but it is a hassle. And it requires a monospace font, which isn't great for readability. Tables also require a monospace font, and are also a hassle, and you'll still end up with a hard to read pseudo-table. And that's just the mentioned limitations. You also can't include charts, formulas, screenshots, links, superscript, subscript, italics, without severe limitations. If email were still limited to plain text + attachments, I think a lot of them would be "please see attached Word file".
- unsupp0rted 4y ago
  People need very large red "click here" call-to-action buttons to click inside emails. With plain text email you can't have those. Also people need a sampling of your latest blog posts in a table inside all your emails, with a stock photo in the left column and the article title and snippet in the right column.
  - lionkor 4y ago
    Not sure if sarcasm, but I really never got any value from anything like that.
    - donohoe 4y ago
      It’s must be, because it’s provably incorrect. I say this from actual experience.
- eviks 4y ago
  The problem is pretty obvious - you can't format plain text
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
hnlmorg 4y ago
> I set my email clients to use RTF as it’s simpler, more consistent, and one doesn’t send huge email messages full of utterly useless crap (otherwise known as html tags and stuff) Having written an RTF WYSIWYG editor back in the late 90s, I very much disagree that RTF is any better than HTML for any reasons you’ve cited. It’s still an ASCII encoded format with font tags and alike. It just opts for curly braces instead of triangle brackets. The problem with HTML emails isn’t the HTML specification. It’s that 1. Half of email clients don’t support that specification correctly. 2. People abused HTML in emails However those two points could be just as equally relevant had RTF became the dominant document mark up for the web.
- eviks 4y ago
  By the way, is there a great modern RTF alternative?
  - solarkraft 4y ago
    HTML
    - eviks 4y ago
      it's neither modern nor great

lionkor 4y ago

I send most of my emails as plaintext - have yet to find a problem with it.

ornornor 4y ago
The “problem” is that you can’t embed trackers, images for tracking, and other marketing crap.
- lucumo 4y ago
  Yes. Famously, this is why stuff on paper ever only uses a single font with empty line paragraph separators, and nothing else.
  - harryvederci 4y ago
    I thought paper was deprecated?
    - zx8080 4y ago
      Also pens and pencils. Who cares about that since we have chatgpt now!
  - imgabe 4y ago
    Prior to computers most business correspondence would be typewritten in essentially the same font with little or no graphics, maybe a logo on the letterhead if you’re really fancy. That seemed to work fine.
    - zamnos 4y ago
      Ah yes. Prior to computers there was no such thing as art, and then before the invention of color, everything was black and white.
      - imgabe 4y ago
        The topic was email. Email does not need to be art.
        lucumo 4y ago
        https://images.indianahistory.org/digital/collection/m0399/id/31463 https://images.indianahistory.org/digital/collection/m0399/i... Even in this letter from 1950, there is: - bold type - underlining - different text alignments - a table It's done shittily, but it's done. It also took forever, which is why they had to fill large rooms with typists.
        imgabe 4y ago
        You can do all that with plain text, except for the bold.
        lucumo 4y ago
        You can emulate them imperfectly. Underlining will use much more space with dashes. So much so that the spacing adds to the emphasis. And you can't use it in running text. Underlining with underscores OTOH is hard to read and has less emphasis than normal underlining. Alignment can be done more or less correctly, but it is a hassle. And it requires a monospace font, which isn't great for readability. Tables also require a monospace font, and are also a hassle, and you'll still end up with a hard to read pseudo-table. And that's just the mentioned limitations. You also can't include charts, formulas, screenshots, links, superscript, subscript, italics, without severe limitations. If email were still limited to plain text + attachments, I think a lot of them would be "please see attached Word file".
unsupp0rted 4y ago
People need very large red "click here" call-to-action buttons to click inside emails. With plain text email you can't have those. Also people need a sampling of your latest blog posts in a table inside all your emails, with a stock photo in the left column and the article title and snippet in the right column.
- lionkor 4y ago
  Not sure if sarcasm, but I really never got any value from anything like that.
  - donohoe 4y ago
    It’s must be, because it’s provably incorrect. I say this from actual experience.
eviks 4y ago
The problem is pretty obvious - you can't format plain text

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

hnlmorg 4y ago

> I set my email clients to use RTF as it’s simpler, more consistent, and one doesn’t send huge email messages full of utterly useless crap (otherwise known as html tags and stuff) Having written an RTF WYSIWYG editor back in the late 90s, I very much disagree that RTF is any better than HTML for any reasons you’ve cited. It’s still an ASCII encoded format with font tags and alike. It just opts for curly braces instead of triangle brackets. The problem with HTML emails isn’t the HTML specification. It’s that 1. Half of email clients don’t support that specification correctly. 2. People abused HTML in emails However those two points could be just as equally relevant had RTF became the dominant document mark up for the web.

eviks 4y ago
By the way, is there a great modern RTF alternative?
- solarkraft 4y ago
  HTML
  - eviks 4y ago
    it's neither modern nor great