[mjhoy]

> represent emails with meaningful formatting

For basic formatting (bold text, headings, lists, links, etc etc), Emacs can render using its built in web browser. The "richer" it is, the more screwy the formatting gets. Usually you can at least read the emails.

You can easily pipe an email to your web browser of choice. This works fine but isn't exactly what you want to be doing all the time.

For my work, I am mostly dealing with plain text and attachments. The rich stuff is usually the email I care less about anyway. I don't think I'd want to use mu4e if I was dealing with rich content often. You can do it but it definitely slows you down.