Linux HTML mail agent with RTL and LTR paragraph explicit support

[Dotan Cohen]

On Mon, Jun 25, 2012 at 8:06 AM, Shachar Shemesh <shachar at shemesh.biz> wrote:
> I disagree completely. The embedding control characters are designed for,
> well, embedding.

Correct. As plain text has no concept of a paragraph, using \n, \n\n,
\r\n, \r\n\r\n, or any other convention for a paragraph is arbitrary.
So if any arbitrary part of the text is to be RTL (no matter if the
user calls it a paragraph or not) then it is to be marked as an
embedded RTL section.


> What the standard[1] suggests, but does not require, is the
> use of the first strong directional character in the paragraph. The reasons
> this does not work for email are:
>
> It is not required by the standard. It is suggested as a way to determine
> paragraph directionality, but this suggestion is incomplete. For example,
> the standard says nothing about what to do with a paragraph with no strong
> directional character at all.
> This suggestion is non-normative. The standard explicitly states that a
> "higher level protocol" can be used to determine this property.
> HTML has chosen the "higher level property" as the BiDi directionality path.
> Unless certain discussions currently in effect become standard, HTML will
> not guess the directionality of a paragraph ever, no matter how much you
> want it to. There are some discussions about adding a "direction: auto"
> property to CSS.
> The only standard way to provide paragraph directionality in email is by
> sending it as HTML
>
> A few takeaways. There is no standard I'm aware of that states you SHOULDN'T
> use the first character in a paragraph to determine paragraph direction in
> plain-text emails. I think that is a perfectly reasonable approach. However,
> most of the world uses various MS based email readers. Those don't do it,
> and they do not violate any standard by not doing it. As a result, if you
> want your email to be legible by any recipient, HTML mail is the way to go
> if you are writing in Hebrew. Complaining to your recipient (or sender) that
> they are not doing it properly is both impolite and, which I feel many
> people here will see as worse, technically incorrect.
>
>
> I know many people on this list don't like this standard, but this extra
> email did nothing to change it (not that I, personally, think that changing
> it is the right thing to do).
>

I agree with you completely in regards to interoperating with
defacto-standard software.


>> Are you referring to me, in regard to the discussion that we had in
>> which I think that the LTR- and RTL-Embedding characters should be
>> available in the Hebrew keyboard layout?
>
> No. I am referring to all those who complain so violently when HTML mail is
> sent to the list.
>

I see. I'm glad that I know how to configure my email client properly
not to notice it, and that I have the disk space to spare for some
markup. I wonder how loud those folks would scream if they noticed
that Hebrew UTF-8 characters are _two_ bytes long!


>>  That doesn't mean that I
>> dislike the idea of using HTML. Actually, I don't like HTML mail but
>> not for that reason, rather a personal preference with no root in
>> ideology nor technical reason.
>
> Okay, so maybe I was referring to you after all :-)
>

No, I'm not a complainer. I don't like _sending_ HTML mail, but I'll
happily receive the mail in any format that standard email clients
support (NOT Word!).



-- 
Dotan Cohen

http://gibberish.co.il
http://what-is-what.com