Larry Garfield wrote:
On Wed, 16 Jul 2008 10:12:33 +0100, Matt Connolly <matt@cabinetuk.com> wrote:
Besides, email clients have been HTML friendly for a *long* time, so I don't see why Drupal shouldn't have an interface that understands rich email messages.
Thoughts?
Matt
I am going to take the luddite position. Consider yourself warned. :-)
HTML email is not, as far as I am aware, an actual standard.
Well there's this http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc1341/7_2_Multipart.html and there's the fact that over half of emails sent are html formatted ;-)
Why should we encourage that? As far as I'm concerned, we shouldn't.
That said, there may well be advantages to switching to drupal_render() for email messages. I am in general a big fan of structured data remaining structured for as long as possible. The benefit, however, would not be for HTML mail but for, say, easier email attachments. That such a move would make it easier to send HTML email as well, well, that's a side effect I suppose we can live with.
I have just been working on an email that I need Drupal to send which include both tabular data and a graph In Drupal 5 the mimemail module worked a treat for this. Yes I had to work at getting the formatting to work consistently - but then what's new - it's just another dimension to cross browser support. It would be really useful to have the ability to more easily send formatted mail - the more ways too cleanly hook into Drupal's email sending process the better. I don't like HTML email - but I don't dictate my preferences to clients. If they want formatted email with company logos and and 3 pages of legal disclaimers - I may try to inform them of alternatives - but if its what they want and they're paying - it's what I'll provide. -- Sean Burlington www.practicalweb.co.uk