Linux HTML mail agent with RTL and LTR paragraph explicit support

[Nadav Har'El]

On Mon, Jun 25, 2012, Shachar Shemesh wrote about "Re: Linux HTML mail agent with RTL and LTR paragraph explicit support":
> I disagree completely. The embedding control characters are designed
> for, well, embedding. 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:

I remember how 11 years ago, when I wrote "bidiv", a simple command-line
tool to display Hebrew text files and emails (using the bidi algorithm
from fribidi), I had exactly the problems you described. While the
standard *does*, if I remember correctly, specify how the base direction
of each paragraph is determined (using the first character with a
strong direction), no standard really specified what in a text file is a
"paragraph". I ended up implementing several different algorithms, but
my favorite (and bidi's default) became splitting up the text file into
paragraphs on empty lines.

At the time, there was really no other tool for displaying bidi plain
text, so I hoped that this convention would be adopted by others.
I don't know if it ever was - I'm still hoping it is, or will be.
I certainly haven't seen a different convention. But my biggest fear
is Shachar's claim that:

>  4. The only standard way to provide paragraph directionality in email
>     is by sending it as HTML

I still believe that there's merit to plain text - a document format
that is guaranteed to contain nothing but text - no icons, no fonts, no
bold, no underlines, nothing, just text. I honestly think that the best
format for emails (and also for instant-messaging, SMSs, tweets, and
various other types of textual messages) is plain text.

I refuse to admit that while plain text can still exist for English
text, it cannot be used for Hebrew text. If we're missing conventions on
how plain text is supposed to work in Hebrew, then by all means - let's
try to define these conventions. That's what I thought I did 11 years
ago with bidiv (see http://dev.man-online.org/man1/bidiv/)

> However, most of the world uses various MS based email
> readers.

Is this actually true nowadays? Honestly *nobody* I know uses any
MS-based email readers nowadays. Most home users are using some sort of
web mail. Others I know use Thunderbird, the mail client in iOS or Android,
Lotus Notes(!), and other stuff (some on this list use crazy things like
mutt and emacs ;-)).

> 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.

What do all these mail clients do about paragraphs et al. in Hebrew
plain-text mails? I have to admit - I don't know. It's worth checking.
I don't know if you yourself have actually checked them all...
Some of these mail clients are open source or based on open source, by the
way, so it wouldn't be to contrived to consider changing them to better
show Hebrew.

> No. I am referring to all those who complain so violently when HTML mail
> is sent to the list.

I also hate HTML email, but it has nothing to do with Hebrew. I equally
hate HTML email in English ;-)


-- 
Nadav Har'El                        |       Monday, Jun 25 2012, 6 Tammuz 5772
nyh at math.technion.ac.il             |-----------------------------------------
Phone +972-523-790466, ICQ 13349191 |Long periods of drought are always
http://nadav.harel.org.il           |followed by rain.