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...
This appears to be a MJML wrapper with a Markdown→HTML 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 it’s good to support the journalist but I cannot in good conscience send a link to elderly folks when this is so much safer.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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:
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).
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.
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.
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.
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 it’s good to support the journalist but I cannot in good conscience send a link to elderly folks when this is so much safer.
[1] https://x.com/sspaeti/status/2036539855182627169
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).
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.
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.
You could have a larger text instead of a button, but changing font size is also HTML and not plain-text anymore.
http://microsoft.com/
I don't think so. I certainly didn't have to resort to HTML to make that link readable and clickable.
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).
Human language is an unnecessary abstraction, just like images.
I wish everyone would communicate in pure Binary.
I'm in this "group" and see an immediate usefulness of this over what I'm doing now.