CJKV Information Processing, 2nd Edition

Email

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Email is still very much a plain-text paradigm, and is likely to be so for many years. Of

course, it is possible to use stylized text in an email message, but as the message becomes

thread-like, with multiple replies or forwards, much of the “style” is stripped away. And,

for some email clients, such as mobile devices, the plain-text paradigm adds a layer of

simplicity and robustness to an otherwise complex electronic device.

Sending Email

Today, sending email has become trivial and is now as simple as launching your favorite

email client, typing in one or more email addresses, composing the message, and then

sending it. In the past, email clients tended to be much more text-based. e user was

once exposed to some of the nitty-gritty details, such as encoding conversion and similar

operations. e current generation of email clients have successfully insulated users from

these details, and they can instead focus on using email as a tool.

Looking back only a decade, one was forced to make a few preparations before a CJKV

text data could be reliably transmitted through email. I originally suggested that the fol-

lowing guidelines be adhered to as closely as possible:

Break long lines to less than 80 columns (75 columns or fewer was preferred).•

Compose the document using a monospaced font, because most email clients used •

monospaced fonts for display purposes.

Do not incl ...