YJL

I don't want to take away the effort which the developer of markdown-here (seen via GitHub Explore) has put into this browser extension and addon, but I found it's unbelievable to spend a lot of time for a solution when there is a very simple one already lies around within arm's reach.

First of all, he gets it all wrong. Having Markdown support in webmail client is not a solution for his problem which he describes in the README:

Writing email with code in it is pretty tedious. Writing Markdown with code in it is easy. I found myself writing email in Markdown in the Github in-browser editor, then copying the preview into email. This is a pretty absurd workflow, so I decided create a tool to write and render Markdown right in the email. [emphasis mine]

He is right, that workflow is tedious, however the problem is not the workflow, but why chose a workflow isn't necessary in the first place. Hacking Markdown into webmail client is not a solution, but another problem, this reminds me of that two problems. Just to see the first #1 to #6 issues, he is only troubling himself. Hacking someone's web interface is never be a good idea, a lot of element ID or class may change in any time, eventually your hack becomes useless, then you need to push another silly patch for the name changes. And such changes are relatively easy to fix, sometimes, you need to intercept for timing. It is all nasty hacks, not worth doing it. To describe its worthiness if you must, one word: "fancy."

Take a look at Markdown code in the screenshot, whether you know about Markdown syntax or not, don't you agree Markdown code is fairly human-readable? So, one solution has already presented itself: simply writing an email in Markdown in plain text.

The only (and actual) problem remains is the variable-width font. Many webmail clients don't have options for fonts, which is the real problem.

I have fixed that issue with Pentadactyl, simple user style resolves the whole issue easily. You don't need an extension go through all sorts of problems and it may break anytime. Just change the font to fixed-width font. I have Gmail and Google Groups use fixed-width font, it's much easier to read about technical content. It's lightweight, no need for a big extension, inserting a CSS rule solves the problem.

In my honest opinion, rich formatting has never been good for writing emails just as if you try to write in word processor. You spend a lot of time on messing around the typesetting with nothing actually written. But mind you, by no means that I am saying you should avoid them, please don't misunderstand.

Many of emails looks like being painted by a 3-year-old. So are some blogs, have you ever seen a blog which has each post written with different fonts and text sizes? That's just horrible and they has more colors than a rainbow in single post.

People wants to write an attractive and/or professional looking email, catching your eyes whatever the word they want you to read twice, so they mark it bold, make it italic, highlight with red color, brush with white background. At this moment, nothing is going to stop them going further, font size goes up 2 scales, then one scale more, change font, draw a underline, prefix and append a smiley, align to center, make font size even bigger until they fill up the entire width. That's a hell of email, literally.

If you are saying some people just can't the important parts of your email, therefore you need to use rich formatting. Then, either you such at writing or that person is not a good reader when the email has 100 words. To be honest, how many times you have written emails longer than that?

Plain text is good enough to speak up your mind, learn to use *, _, indentation, and footnoting. That's enough to write a good and clear email, even for topics like coding. You don't even need to write in Markdown, just write an email as you usually do. Heck, just write an email as if you are writing a real-life letter if you still do.

One thing important to remember is email is a general communication tool. If you want to talk about code, that's fine, but you need to know the limitation, know when to stop, know when to move on to the right platform for continuation, such as an issue tracker. Pasting a whole code in email body for discussion only shows you don't know what you are doing, use the right tool.

Reading is as important as writing, and it's not hard, the only thing you need is time. Just sit down and read a word after another, that's it.

Reading a good-written email is like reading a good article, have you ever read a story on front page of newspaper with bold type, italic type, etc? Do they read unclear or confusing? A good writer doesn't need those to emphasize his or her points, the words already do. (Hench, I am not one)

Back to markdown-here, again, I don't want to take away his effort. So if you like coding or trying new stuff, go ahead to install it and help develop it. I am sure it's a good extension and if you get asked 'why,' you can answer 'because I can.'

If you agree with me, share your tips of writing emails; if not, feel free to express, I am looking forward to reading why my points are wrong.

I have been writing posts using Markdown with python-markdown2.

Using it makes me feel more clear while I am writing a post. One thing I love most of Markdown is how we make a link. Here is an example:

This is a [text][link-id].

[link-id]: http://example.com

That is how you can make links¹. If your post has, say, a dozen of links, the HTML source would read like a mess if you prefer not to use WYSIWYG editor. And one possible benefit is you can generate HTML with Markdown source file and additional links file (a links database), just need a shell scripting trick to supply. You put some common links in it, so you can directly use them with specifying again in your Markdown source file. For example:

[google]: http://www.google.com
[twitter]: http://twitter.com
[markdown]: http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/
(lots of links)

If you read the Syntax of Markdown, you might think there is something missing. I have to say you are wrong. You can always enter HTML code, though there might have some catches you might have to be aware of.

For <script>, I have no problem with it, you can just copy some code snippet and paste it, that always works.

Happy mood? If you want to add some colors just use span, e.g. <span style="color:#f00">Text in RED!</span>.

Images from Flickr? I just copy the HTML code provided by Flickr directly, I only wrap them with <div style="text-align:center">CODE from Flickr</div>, so the images would be aligned at center.

If you want to embed a stylesheet make sure you have it like this way:

<div>
<style>
#something {
  background-color: #fff;
  color: #000;
  }
</style>
</div>

Using <div> to wrap it up.

python-markdown2 is a really good converter, I havent met any bugs. And if your post have some code and it happens to have foo_bar_this(), there is a conflict with _ since Markdown use it to mark italic and bold texts. python-markdown2 has an Code friendly extension to get rid of it, so you down have to manually escape it, e.g. \_. The other good extension is the Footnotes extenstion, you can put some footnotes on your posts like this².

Using Markdown to write makes me concentrate on contents not the typesetting. I also have clear idea what pages I have linked.

If you also use Vim, you can download the syntax file from here for Markdown source files.

[1]	It also has other ways to make links.

[2]	An example footnote.