š¾ Archived View for dj-chase.com āŗ documents āŗ pleasant-html-mail.gmi captured on 2023-07-10 at 13:27:18. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
ā¬ ļø Previous capture (2023-06-14)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Iāve always found HTML email to be unpleasant (even before I knew about HTML vs plain-text email), but itās always been just an annoyance. However, I now use a TUI mail client (aerc), so HTML emails are downright unreadable.
I solved this by preprocessing HTML mails with `lynx -dump -stdin`, which turned out to be surprisingly pleasant. Because Lynx behaves like a filter in this mode, it just turns HTML emails into nicely-formatted plain-text emails. I say ānicely formattedā because lynx indents its output according to the documentās structure, which is particularly nice for long newsletters.
For example, the FSF is really good about providing a plain-text alternative to their newsletters. The problem, though, is that their newsletters are really long, so parts of it can easily get buried.
Hereās an example of their plain-text newsletter:
# Newsletter Title ## First article title Paragraphs and paragraphs of text. ## Second article title Paragraphs and paragraphs of text. ## Third article title You get the picture.
But then hereās an example of their HTML newsletter run through lynx:
Newsletter Title First article title Paragraphs and paragraphs of text. Second article title Paragraphs and paragraphs of text. Third article title You get the picture.
ā
I normally wouldnāt write a post about such a small thing, but I was so pleasantly surprised by this that I wanted to share it.
ā
Questions, comments, or wrote a reply? Email me.
Ā©Ā DJ Chase, 2022-08-30. Licensed under the Academic Free License (AFLĀ 3.0)