[Gllug] HTML email formatting

[David Damerell]

On , 21 Nov 2001, Alex Hudson wrote:
>On Wed, 2001-11-21 at 15:21, David Damerell wrote:
>>Um. I find it hard to think of much, short of tables, that something
>>requiring only 5 minutes to write would benefit from.
>Even highlighting sections can be extremely important. Honestly!

*** READ ME ***

Is that so hard? :-)

>>Tables I'll grant you; but quoting, indentation and linking? Clearly
>>we can quote in plain-text email; if I wanted to indent I could; and
>>if I want a link, I'll type the URL into the plain text - if you have
>>a nice client, that'll be just as useful to you.
>Yes, I didn't say it was impossible though: just that it's not as easy
>to work with. For example, in pine you can Ctrl-J to re-justify text and
>fix broken quoting. However, this breaks with some text (containing >,
>for example) requiring manual fixing, and shouldn't really need to be
>done anyway.

Pine in crap shocker. Clearly, a mail client can (and should) include
a better reformatting tool than that.

>Yes, you can type in a URL, but again, it's not so easy.

Y'wha? What's an easier way to get a URL in than typing it (or c&ping
it)?

>Especially if it's a long one: text mail should have lines no longer
>than 72 characters, so if you do have a link longer than that it's
>susceptible to breaking.

Eh... text mail should not ordinarily have lines over 72 characters in
in new text, but I see nothing wrong with using a longer line to
accomodate a single item longer than that; and a good client will
present it gracefully and pass it to your Web browser of choice
without screwing it up.

>There are lots of minor niggles like that which just aren't present
>in HTML email. 

It sounds to, thus far, as if the problems are just with crappy
clients; but I think you can write a GUI HTML all-singing all-dancing
mail client that's just as crap.

>>There are conventions for indicating amendments in plain text -
>>awkward, but without the 'angry fruit salad' effect on the results.
>Again, much harder to use though.

Not _much_ harder, no, and as mentioned elsewhere it's easier on the
colour-blind - or the just plain blind blind, who will see having a
screen reader tell them what 'colour' a given piece of text is as a
bad substitute.

>If I want to italicise or otherwise emphasise a whole sentance, what do
>I do?

It can be awkward, as you mention, but at least the results do not
impact readability as italicising more than a tiny amount of formatted
text does...

>It depends on how you use email. For something like this, where it is a
>communication medium, text is fine & I have nothing against that.

More than fine. I feel that email and news have become (when used
well) expressive simply because people cannot be distracted by
formatting. All you have to go on - once you've mastered the normal
posting conventions - is the words you can write. There's no room for
the kind of glossy brochure bullshit you get in the real world.

Conventional book typesetting is like this, too; although they have to
make formatting decisions (because there's no way the reader can
choose their favourite font in the way that the reader of an email
can, etc.), they operate on the basis that things are right when
there's nothing left to take away...

>However, for most things I use it for at work it's most of a
>collaboration tool - really, we're sending short documents back and
>forth. To do all the wordprocessing you would want to, it would be a
>real pain in text mode. 

Um. If you want a CVS repository, why not use one?

-- 
David Damerell <damerell at chiark.greenend.org.uk> flcl?

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