RE: HTML for email

[Larry Masinter <[e-mail]>]

The problem of RFC-formats and editing tools and the problem of HTML for email and mail archives -- these are fundamentally the same problem.

Alice wants to send something she saw to Bob, with some confidence that she'll know what Bob can see.
(Taking into account accessibility, platform-independence, and archiving -- if Bob can take a long time to read).

Right now, all you can do is snap a screenshot or send a PDF, each with its own drawbacks.


--
https://LarryMasinter.net https://interlisp.org

> -----Original Message-----
> From: ietf <[e-mail]> On Behalf Of John Levine
> Sent: Monday, March 1, 2021 4:42 PM
> To: [e-mail]
> Subject: Re: HTML for email
> 
> In article <[e-mail]> you write:
> >On Mon, Mar 01, 2021 at 06:47:20PM -0500, Keith Moore wrote:
> >I put the "web" qualifier in because there is also an official IMAP
> >archive, that does preserve the message as submitted.  But it's not
> >very discoverable and requires quite a bit more effort to set up and use.
> 
> There's also an mbox format archive for people who really want the bits at:
> 
> https://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/text/
> 
> It's rsync-able.
> 
> If people want the mail archive to show HTML, there's certainly plenty of
> HTML sanitizers we could use to show the HTML version of messages if we
> thought that was a good use of the tools team's time.
> 
> On the other hand, perhaps we could make up our mind first whether
> formatted e-mail is a part of the way the world works now, or it's a scourge
> to be stomped out.  Like, you know, NAT.
> 
> R's,
> John