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on Gopher (inofficial)
(HTM) Visit Hacker News on the Web
COMMENT PAGE FOR:
(HTM) Show HN: Email.md â Markdown to responsive, email-safe HTML
dimaberlin wrote 6 hours 23 min ago:
The real pain in email HTML isn't writing it â it's maintaining it.
Markdown at least gives you something a human can edit 6 months later
without crying.
AlphaTheGoat wrote 6 hours 50 min ago:
Good luck with the adoption of markdown to email html. That's the
greatest challenge.
lexro_ai wrote 12 hours 17 min ago:
Nice. Markdown-to-email is one of those things that sounds simple until
you actually try it and Outlook destroys everything. Curious how you're
handling nested lists â that's usually where things fall apart. Does
it degrade gracefully or just break?
dancablam wrote 6 hours 44 min ago:
It uses MJML under the hood to ensure email-safe HTML is generated.
That should prevent many edge cases where failures can happen - but
I'm sure there are some skeletons we'll have to find / fix.
annie511266728 wrote 12 hours 54 min ago:
Feels more like a content layer for LLMs than a replacement for MJML.
In my experience models tend to break HTML layouts pretty easily, while
Markdown degrades more gracefully.
austinjp wrote 12 hours 28 min ago:
It uses MJML under the hood.
(HTM) [1]: https://mjml.io/
bpev wrote 13 hours 41 min ago:
I'm never seen the `::: header` or
`{width="200"}` kind of syntax before. Is
this custom or Frankenstein solution? Or is there some kind of
md-extended pattern for defining components that has been gaining steam
or smthn? Markdown tooling is always confusing, since everyone has
their own standard.
rbbydotdev wrote 7 hours 0 min ago:
Admonitions are :::, allows you do to do things like this, if you
have custom parser, if not, your admonitions can fail gracefully as
plain text
:: gallery
::
(HTM) [1]: https://cats.com/orange-hair1.png
(HTM) [2]: https://cats.com/orange-hair2.png
(HTM) [3]: https://cats.com/orange-hair3.png
rcarr wrote 8 hours 54 min ago:
[1]
(HTM) [1]: https://github.com/remarkjs/remark-directive
(HTM) [2]: https://talk.commonmark.org/t/generic-directives-plugins-syn...
austinjp wrote 12 hours 27 min ago:
Yep both are widely used. I forget which markdowns extensions they
originated from. The Pandoc website probably has the details.
phrotoma wrote 11 hours 39 min ago:
Aye, I've seen these both in kramdown and quarto.
deknos wrote 14 hours 57 min ago:
i never understood why the markdown mime type was not used in
emailclients in webclients or desktop programs...
that would eliminate most html usage and enable longer texts than 70-85
characters per line.
teddyh wrote 9 hours 39 min ago:
Itâs up to the e-mail client implementors, but I would personally
prefer text/enriched, RFC 1896, instead of markdown.
mghackerlady wrote 15 hours 52 min ago:
Or, hear me out. Just send the markdown and skip the HTML bullshit. Any
mail client will render markdown fine and the ones that don't either
aren't worth using or don't want HTML mail in the first place. HTML
email is the worst thing to ever happen to the internet
ksajadi wrote 16 hours 38 min ago:
This is great! Iâd love to see this supported in SendOps!
vindin wrote 20 hours 44 min ago:
This problem was solved almost 15 years ago
razvan_maftei wrote 20 hours 48 min ago:
I'm not exactly following as to who this is for - people are going to
use email templates instead of writing Markdown emails, and agents can
just as easily spit out HTML. Seems like your solution is in search of
a problem.
Lord_Zero wrote 20 hours 51 min ago:
Does anyone use MJML in golang? What package are you using?
josegonzalez wrote 23 hours 58 min ago:
This plus a block-based editor like editorjs would be a great addition
to any custom cms.
runtype wrote 1 day ago:
Would love to use this - any plans for Cloudflare Workers support? Some
of the node APIs you're using block it from working on Cloudflare right
now.
dancablam wrote 18 hours 52 min ago:
Added support for cloudflare workers in 0.1.2. Thanks for the tip!
runtype wrote 8 hours 33 min ago:
Sweet, thanks!
dancablam wrote 22 hours 11 min ago:
Good idea. I'll look into this.
Barbing wrote 1 day ago:
Very nice. I think the kind of folks attracted to this thread might
have some thoughts on a workflow I'm interested in.
When I see a news article, I want to be able to click a button on my
Mac or iPhone to send the text of the article in the body of the email.
Bonus points for rehosting the images from the article. And using a
similar font both without carrying over any of the original external
dependencies.
Normally itâs good to support the journalist but I cannot in good
conscience send a link to elderly folks when this is so much safer.
johanvts wrote 23 hours 54 min ago:
Use the browser reader mode, select all, right click send email. Is
it something like that you want?
Ringz wrote 15 hours 3 min ago:
If only there was a faster way to âselect allâ!
Barbing wrote 4 hours 25 min ago:
(if youâre down to experiment!)
For the next three intriguing articles you see on arbitrary
sites, does the select all trick produce an aesthetically
pleasing email? Do external dependencies get carried over? Do you
spend any time manually removing cruft? Does the formatting leave
anything to be desired?
When I do this all manually I can make it look great, and now
that weâve seen we can train computers to make stuff look
great, itâs going to be a point of frustration for me until I
have the one-click beautiful-article-email button.
Barbing wrote 20 hours 36 min ago:
Thank you! Great trick that comes pretty close.
Escapade5160 wrote 1 day ago:
At this point markdown is going to be the foundation of the entire AI
web. Someone the other day showed off Markdown as a responsive frontend
protocol. Now we've got email. How long until we're writing classes in
markdown? We can only abstract this so far before we confuse AI more
than help it.
whattheheckheck wrote 21 hours 27 min ago:
Look up Configuration Complexity clock
gojomo wrote 1 day ago:
Which email client will stylize raw markdown itself, making the HTML
step here superfluous?
johanvts wrote 17 hours 1 min ago:
Emacs ofc :) seriously it should not be too much work although
org-mode syntax would be even easier, there is a markdown mode here:
[1] The email part is not something i have done myself but it has
been a feature for a very long time and you can find plenty of guides
online.
(HTM) [1]: https://jblevins.org/projects/markdown-mode/
Avamander wrote 1 day ago:
It would first require a standard for Markdown. After that there
would be very little stopping anyone from implementing it. I guess a
MIME type for standard Markdown would also be nice.
Pretty sure I've said it before, but it would be a nice middle ground
between text and all the complexity HTML+CSS brings in (if you want
to compete with other HTML clients).
SoftTalker wrote 17 hours 37 min ago:
The idea of Markdown was that it was supposed to be readable in
plain text without any stylizing.
rbbydotdev wrote 1 day ago:
Nice usage of admonitions. This is a great example of how eloquent
markdown can be. Still very readable while even including the markup
for 'footer' and the call out code.
articsputnik wrote 1 day ago:
Love everything to Markdownify :) I was just wondering, is there a
Neovim/Markdown email client? Potentially using something like this? I
love Neomutt, or Newsboat, and other TUIs. It would be great to have
something totally on Markdown. Update: I gave it a spin [1] with Go and
some of my favorite CLI's.
(HTM) [1]: https://x.com/sspaeti/status/2036539855182627169
dancablam wrote 1 day ago:
There's not one that I'm aware of. Maybe it's about time there is :D
articsputnik wrote 23 hours 52 min ago:
I gave Claude a spin, given all my likings ;)
(HTM) [1]: https://github.com/ssp-data/neomd
deanputney wrote 1 day ago:
Curious why the CLI function is `mvd` instead of `mdv`?
dancablam wrote 1 day ago:
What CLI function?
safehuss wrote 1 day ago:
Anything that makes email development easier is great I guess, but have
personally found MJML great for solving the issues you'd run into, and
not sure I want yet another abstraction layer on top of that which
makes it more limited...
seer wrote 15 hours 17 min ago:
They address this in the docs - it is meant to make authoring the
content easier for LLMs since that is easy for them to write.
It still uses MJML for the actual templates, but it is a translation
layer between markdown and the template itself.
If you need to author a lot of emails with LLM this does seem like it
would be a great fit.
safehuss wrote 10 hours 44 min ago:
If the goal is to write emails purely using AI, then it is trivial
to attach the MJML documentation as context to your LLM using
context7 MCP or something of the sort. It's not a very complex
language and its documentation is not large at all.
That's assuming the crawlers haven't ingested it all already...
vanillameow wrote 14 hours 57 min ago:
If you need to author a lot of emails with LLM you should be
rethinking your business strategy tbh
matzalazar wrote 1 day ago:
Great project! And if you don't mind a little workaround and some
Python scripting, you can turn a regular Obsidian folder into an
automatic outbox. Write markdown, drag, drop, and ship.
Igor_Wiwi wrote 1 day ago:
I am working on smth similar markdown reader for humans, not agents -
(HTM) [1]: https://mdview.io
theanonymousone wrote 1 day ago:
I hope .md domains do not become a security hole as Markdown raises in
popularity...
brian93512 wrote 1 day ago:
That's a valid concern, especially given the confusion we saw with
.zip or .mov TLDs. But from a security engineering perspective, the
bigger 'Markdown hole' I worry about is injection. When we render
untrusted AI output into HTML for email, the sanitization pipeline
becomes critical. I'd be curious to see how this library handles
potential XSS vectors during the MD-to-HTML conversion.
Imustaskforhelp wrote 1 day ago:
This reminds me of the infamous dot zip domain and the security chaos
that had followed.
ph4rsikal wrote 1 day ago:
Markdown is the secret winner of the AI early years.
austinjp wrote 12 hours 17 min ago:
I'm not so sure. It's definitely the de facto standard, but I suspect
minimal HTML is better. Just enough tags to add structure and meaning
(H1-H6, p, a, em, section for structure including nesting, maybe
more). LLMs were trained on a lot of HTML, they're good at processing
it. HTML requires more tokens than markdown but I believe it's worth
it. I'll find out in a few weeks as I experiment with both.
hatmatrix wrote 1 day ago:
cries in org-mode
phyzix5761 wrote 23 hours 47 min ago:
org-mode is amazing for humans. I, as a real human and not a robot,
use it every day.
terminalgravity wrote 1 day ago:
I feel you on this too.
binaryturtle wrote 1 day ago:
Any "HTML emails" get filtered straight into the spam folder here. I
think I'm not part of the target audience here.
SergeAx wrote 20 hours 26 min ago:
How do you deal with things like "we sent you a one-time code to
confirm your login"? Most of those are HTML-formatted today
binaryturtle wrote 12 hours 34 min ago:
I still can check the SPAM folder, if needed.
But most SPAMs are HTML, so you'll have a good default last-stage
in-client filtering in place in case some SPAM actually makes it
through the other setup on the server (greylisting, DNS based
filtering lists, policy-based filtering, etc.) :)
Lord_Zero wrote 20 hours 52 min ago:
Is that a thing? Is it safer to use plain text emails?
unmole wrote 15 hours 3 min ago:
> Is that a thing?
There must be literally dozens of people who do this.
mghackerlady wrote 15 hours 50 min ago:
Very much so. While a lot of mail clients block images, they can be
used to track you. Hell a lot of HTML can be used to track you if
you're smart about it
pembrook wrote 1 day ago:
I like how you aren't hiding the fact this is MJML under the hood and
don't layer complex abstractions over MJML spec like similar projects
(cough react email cough).
The devs maintaining MJML deserve so much credit for dealing with
Gmail/Outlook's monopoly bullshit and 2007 html.
Nice idea for those who manage content in markdown. I've moved away
from putting emails in my codebase, but seems great for founders moving
fast.
r1290 wrote 19 hours 44 min ago:
Whatâs your opinion on react email?
pembrook wrote 10 hours 57 min ago:
Mostly fluff/hype. Not a value-add over just using raw MJML (which
has nice VScode plugins for live previews), and in fact a long term
risk to add to a codebase since react-email is just a marketing
play by Resend (a startup) and will not be maintained as diligently
as MJML.
Also, LLMs know MJML really well.
joshmoody24 wrote 4 hours 12 min ago:
This is my experience as well. MJML is the older, more reliable,
better documented technology. And when it comes to debugging
email rendering, you really, REALLY want as much documentation as
possible.
dancablam wrote 1 day ago:
Thanks! I agree - the MJML team has laid so much groundwork and it
frankly made this project possible.
KhushaliT wrote 1 day ago:
templates are cool but seems too heavy to land in primary inbox
joshmoody24 wrote 4 hours 11 min ago:
What do you mean by "too heavy"? File size?
koakuma-chan wrote 1 day ago:
I wish people just sent plain text.
joshmoody24 wrote 4 hours 14 min ago:
I used to think this, but lately I'm getting a lot of plain text
marketing emails that are clearly LLMs. Now I dislike plain text
emails just as much as HTML ones.
nailer wrote 1 day ago:
I don't. Plain text is typically formatted for 72-78 monospace
characters - even if you don't want formatting, the text will look
bad on any device that doesn't match IBM's 80-character punch cards
from 1928.
Avamander wrote 1 day ago:
In theory format=flowed solves that, but the same boomers that
despise HTML mail also refuse to provide that accommodation, for
anyone not behind a teletype.
ape4 wrote 1 day ago:
Yeah, the first example on that site doesn't need any formatting.
It just says your code is
pembrook wrote 1 day ago:
Plain text? Pffft.
Human language is an unnecessary abstraction, just like images.
I wish everyone would communicate in pure Binary.
linhns wrote 1 day ago:
A picture is worth a thousand words.
XCSme wrote 1 day ago:
What about images, links?
Formatted text like bold or underline?
I also prefer plain text, but in most of my emails I talk about
technical stuff, or I send transactional emails that require actions,
in which case showing buttons is a much better user experience than
plain text.
lproven wrote 12 hours 0 min ago:
> What about images, links? Formatted text like bold or underline?
Easy. Don't.
That's the great bit. You don't have to.
(HTM) [1]: https://useplaintext.email/
XCSme wrote 11 hours 56 min ago:
Why isn't this website plain text then?
einr wrote 11 hours 34 min ago:
Probably because it's a website and not email.
XCSme wrote 11 hours 30 min ago:
But I have to send the same sort of information (albeit
shorter) via email on a regular basis.
A lot of alerts, reporting, quotes, code snippets, short
documentation or step by step instructions, etc.
I don't just send emails to say "Hey, let's meet at 5". You
know the memes with "this could have been an email", it
usually is this case.
Just to be clear, most of those rich emails are the
automatic/transactional emails.
einr wrote 10 hours 38 min ago:
Yeah, I get it, I unfortunately live in the real world too.
I like to keep it plain text whenever possible but it's
extremely useful sometimes to have inline screenshots and
stuff like that.
I didn't mean to be sarcastic but it's just that to me,
philosophically, email is a plaintext technology that had
HTML bolted on to it kicking and screaming, and it's always
been kind of crap. People like me hate things that are
fundamentally ugly and crap even if they are useful. The
web was designed for HTML from the start.
loloquwowndueo wrote 1 day ago:
I donât want buttons in my emails.
XCSme wrote 1 day ago:
But they are a lot easier to see and click (accessibility, larger
hit area).
You could have a larger text instead of a button, but changing
font size is also HTML and not plain-text anymore.
antiframe wrote 1 day ago:
Every MUA I've used allows the reader to set a font size, so
changing font sizes is 100% a feature of plain-text emails.
Then they get the link the size they need to read it correctly
and it's absolutely easy to read. This here comment is pain
text. Is it hard to read this link: [1] I don't think so. I
certainly didn't have to resort to HTML to make that link
readable and clickable.
(HTM) [1]: http://microsoft.com/
loloquwowndueo wrote 1 day ago:
I donât have problems seeing and clicking normal text, thank
you very much. I donât want buttons on my emails.
XCSme wrote 1 day ago:
I think the OP app is meant for creating transactional emails
(or bulk-send emails like newsletters).
Those templates should account for all types of people and
accessibility levels (including things like ADHD, where you
need a big red button to click, otherwise you get overwhelmed
by a block of text).
koakuma-chan wrote 1 day ago:
You can just send a link, and the user's client will probably
highlight it even if it is plain text.
recursivegirth wrote 1 day ago:
Yea, but how will they hide all the tracking URLs and base64
encoded PII from you in the email?
koakuma-chan wrote 1 day ago:
Using a URL shortener obviously. But you are right, if they
only send plain text, they won't be able to include those
1x1 images at the bottom to track whether you have opened
the email. Any sane email client blocks images by default,
but whatever.
Kwpolska wrote 1 day ago:
This appears to be a MJML wrapper with a MarkdownâHTML converter
attached to it. I think generating HTML from code is easier than
generating Markdown, since there are many templating tools that
understand HTML escaping. And writing HTML is not that hard, especially
for your typical emails, so I'm not really sure if this library would
be helpful in the long run.
joshmoody24 wrote 4 hours 16 min ago:
Writing HTML for emails is a lot harder than you're making it sound.
But MJML does a good job of simplifying it for most use cases.
dallen33 wrote 1 day ago:
I like the idea of this tool, as writing Markdown for some people is
probably easier than HTML. I mean, use whatever floats your boat. I
like that this exists.
j45 wrote 1 day ago:
Also a way to use fewer standards for storage of input and created
text.
alfanick wrote 1 day ago:
"Write markdown. Ship emails." - I see a particular group of people
interested in this, but they have their tools already.
SunshineTheCat wrote 1 day ago:
I think you should probably let that group of people speak for
themselves.
I'm in this "group" and see an immediate usefulness of this over what
I'm doing now.
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