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.