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Ah yes. Prior to computers there was no such thing as art, and then before the invention of color, everything was black and white.
by 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 agoThe topic was email. Email does not need to be art.
- lucumo 4y agohttps://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 agoYou can do all that with plain text, except for the bold.
- lucumo 4y agoYou 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".