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Various improvements

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Drew DeVault 2023-10-25 10:51:10 +02:00
parent 47300a2088
commit abfa6e21dc
2 changed files with 86 additions and 32 deletions
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8
css/style.css
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@ -14,9 +14,15 @@ ul li {
}
pre {
padding-left: 1rem;
max-width: 100%;
overflow-x: auto;
background: #e0e0e0;
margin: 0 -1rem;
padding: 0 1rem;
}
pre + pre {
margin-top: 1rem;
}
h2 a {

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index.html
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@ -10,8 +10,11 @@
<h1>Use plaintext email</h1>
<p>
There are two main types of emails on the internet: plaintext and HTML.
The former is strongly preferred, but often isn't set up by default.
We'll get you set up right.
Many people, particularly in technical communities, strongly prefer or
even require the use of plain text email from participants. However, your
mail client may not have it set up by default. We'll help you get it
configured, and introduce you to the norms and conventions of plain text
email.
</p>
<h2>Table of Contents</h2>
<ol>
@ -506,39 +509,76 @@
Etiquette recommendations for plaintext emails
</a></h2>
<p>
In addition to training you that HTML emails are the norm, many harmful
mail clients may have trained you with other bad habits. Here are some
tips to unlearn them:
A few notes on the subject of plain text email ettiquite:
</p>
<h3>Top posting</h3>
<p>
When you reply to an email, many email clients will include a quoted
version of the message you're replying to beneath the text of your reply.
This leads to long email threads containing the entire history of the
discussion in an increasingly long and nested footer on every email. This
is called "top posting" and is strongly discouraged.
version of the entire message that you are responding to beneath your
reply. This leads to long email threads which contain the entire history
of the discussion in an increasingly long trailer on every email. This is
called "top posting", and it's strongly frowned upon by many users of
plain text email.
</p>
<p>
Though some clients would have you believe otherwise, you can edit the
quoted version of the message you're replying to, and you're encouraged
to. Feel free to trim it down, cutting out any extra text which isn't
directly relevant to your reply - or removing it entirely. Write anything
you have to say underneath the quote it pertains to.
Plain text email makes it easier to incorporate the original text into
your reply much more meaningfully. Consider these two examples:
</p>
<ul>
<pre>Yes, that sounds good.
Jim said on 2019-03-23 at 11:02 PM:
> Are you okay with maroon?
>
> Tim said on 2019-03-23 at 10:43 PM:
>> Do we know what color we should use for the background?
>>
>>> Jim said on 2019-03-23 at 10:30 PM:
>>> Is there anything left to do on the site?</pre>
<p>
This email uses top-posting, and this approach is discouraged. A better
approach might look more like this:
</p>
<pre>Jim said on 2019-03-23 at 11:02 PM:
> Are you okay with maroon?
Yes, that sounds good.</pre>
<p>
You can also edit the original email more, quoting it several times to
make it clear what points you are responding to, like so:
</p>
<pre>Hey Drew,
Can you look into the bug which is causing 2.34 clients to disconnect
immediately? I think this is related to the timeouts change last week.
Also, your fix to the queueing bug is confirmed for the next release,
thanks!</pre>
<pre>Hey Sarah, I can look into that for sure.
> I think this is related to the timeouts change last week.
I'm not so sure. I think reducing the timeouts would *improve* this issue,
if anything. I'll look into it.
> Also, your fix to the queueing bug is confirmed for the next release,
> thanks!
Sweet! Happy to help.</pre>
<p>As the old joke goes...</p>
<ul style="list-style: none; padding: 0;">
<li><strong>A</strong>: Because it reverses the logical flow of conversation.</li>
<li><strong>Q</strong>: Why is top posting frowned upon?</li>
</ul>
<h3>Wrapping your text</h3>
<p>
Email writers are encouraged to wrap their text at 72 columns by inserting
a newline and resuming your writing on the following line. The
<a href="#recommended-clients">recommended clients</a> will do this for
you, as well as any client shown above with "Wraps text or uses
format=flowed" checked. Don't worry about re-wrapping the quoted parts of
message you're replying to unless you want to. If your client doesn't do
this for you, it can easily be the most frustrating part of being a good
email netizen, but it's very much appreciated by recipients.
Plain text emails are generally encouraged to be wrapped at 72 columns,
by inserting a newline and resuming the content on the next line. This is
encouraged to make email more comfortable to read and quote in many of
the contexts where technical users may encounter it, such as terminal
emulators. Of course, it's far too annoying to do this manually as you
write &mdash; the <a href="#recommended-clients">recommended clients</a>
will do this for you, as well as any client shown above with "Wraps text
or uses format=flowed".
</p>
<h2 id="why-plaintext"><a href="#why-plaintext">
Why is plaintext better than HTML?
@ -559,6 +599,12 @@
entering your account password. In plaintext emails, the URL is always
visible, and you can more easily make an informed choice to click it.
</p>
<p>
Many phishing emails have also taken the step of carefully replicating
the visual style of an email you might trust, such as the appearance of a
PayPal email. With plain text, it's much more difficult to trick you like
this.
</p>
<h3>Privacy invasion and tracking</h3>
<p>
Virtually all HTML emails sent by marketers include identifiers in links
@ -569,6 +615,14 @@
more likely to influence your buying habits. HTML emails are good for
marketers and bad for you.
</p>
<h3>Higher incidence of spam</h3>
<p>
HTML emails open up a lot of possibilities which are exploited by
spammers to circumvent spam filters, such as making large amounts of text
invisible, using hidden elements, and so on. Many people discard HTML
emails (particularly mailing lists) on the simple basis that it
dramatically reduces the amount of spam emails they receive.
</p>
<h3>Mail client vulnerabilities</h3>
<p>
HTML is an extremely large and complicated set of specifications designed
@ -624,12 +678,6 @@
emphasis. You can still communicate your point effectively without
bringing along all of the bad things HTML emails come with.
</p>
<hr />
<p>
In short, HTML emails are a security nightmare, are mostly used for
advertising to you and tracking you, are less accessible for many users,
and don't offer anything especially great for it.
</p>
<h2 id="implementation-recommendations"><a href="#implementation-recommendations">
Recommendations for software which sends emails
</a></h2>
@ -704,10 +752,10 @@
<p class="muted">
"But if plaintext is so good, why is this page written in HTML?"
<br />
This is a reference document, not an email, you twit.
This is a reference document, not an email!
</p>
<p class="muted">
This site is under a <a
This site is distributed with the <a
href="https://git.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/useplaintext.email/tree/master/LICENSE"
>MIT license</a>. "Plaintext Certified" graphic by
<a href="https://fosstodon.org/@ohyran">Jens</a>, <a