[development] HTML emails

[Sean Burlington]

Larry Garfield wrote:
> On Wed, 16 Jul 2008 10:12:33 +0100, Matt Connolly <matt at 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