I really do wish that the email provider I use (ProtonMail) would allow specifying a "receive all mail as plain text" option, then run all rich/marked-up text through html2text (on their own servers, of course) before it reaches my encrypted mailbox. While plain text is generally more secure (it's harder to successfully embed malicious content, such as cookies, scripts and trackers), I have additional reasons for wanting my mail to be in plain text (and not that plain text is generally lighter on data transfer).
Technically, Accept-Encoding isn't the right header to use here (because that is for compression) and I got the format wrong. It should be Accept: text/plain, text/markdown. However, I think you get my point.
I'd upvote that request on UserVoice, except that to do so requires login though "magic links" (which don't work on my browsers, because they're magic, obviously).
- Reason #1: I get so many mails with faulty HTML that doesn't render that I no longer even bother doing the conversion myself and replying "
**ParseError:** Content did not render. Please resend as plain text" (in plain text/markdown, *bien sûr*). I just delete them and move on to the next item in my inbox, since I couldn't be bothered to pick through reams of HTML code or copy and paste it, save as HTML and run it through the converter or reopen it in a browser, only to find that it's spam, anyway (which it most often is). - Reason #2: With documents/Webpages that use some special font/rendering technique to convert Web/Wingdings glyphs to characters, I just see the glyphs and move on. I suspect that's because I've disabled/forbidden access to/the use of Google domains (including fonts and CDNs) through LeechBlock. I regret nothing. Don't assume I'm OK with your shady shenanigans or using a modern browser/email client that renders HTML. (Some of us still use CLI tools such as
lynx, not just for the LoLs.)
[Multi-]markdown is pretty much how plain-text email used to be formatted, anyway and, as far as I'm concerned, is perfectly serviceable for email. It's only really the sales and murketing types that pushed for HTML, CSS and JavaScript (with all its attendant fanciness), in emails, IMO. Newer isn't always better. For that matter, if I could write my posts here in Markdown, I would, since I pretty much think in it when I write anything that isn't code. (Both Medium and Mirror allow me to do so, for example.)
Maybe I should learn Sieve (a language, possibly a domain-specific one, used by ProtonMail and other providers for filtering emails) and write code for a filter that does just that or, failing that, at least auto-responds with the above message when HTML is detected, possibly by Content-type, then bins whatever HTML mail I've received.
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