💾 Archived View for dj-chase.com › documents › pleasant-html-mail.t2t captured on 2024-08-18 at 18:16:20.

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Pleasant HTML Mail
en

I’ve always found HTML email to be unpleasant
(even before I knew about HTML vs plain-text email),
but it’s always been just an annoyance.
However, I now use a
%!gmi: TUI
%!html: ''' <abbr title="Terminal User Interface">TUI</abbr>
mail client
%!gmi: (aerc),
%!html: ([aerc https://aerc-mail.org/]),
so HTML emails are downright unreadable.
%!gmi:
%!gmi: [aerc homepage https://aerc-mail.org/]

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 “nicely formatted” because lynx indents its output according to the document’s 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.

Here’s 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 here’s 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.


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I normally wouldn’t write a post about such a small thing,
but I was so pleasantly surprised by this that I wanted to share it.