[hesk]

Including, apparently, the people who created the web site, and who use bold text and different font sizes to format the headlines, colors to indicate features which are supported and not supported, and an image of a "plaintext certified" stamp.

[emasirik]

It's a bit rude for HN, but from the bottom of the article,

> "But if plaintext is so good, why is this page written in HTML?"

> This is a reference document, not an email, you twit.

[vel0city]

It seems their main point is using HTML is trading accessibility and security concerns for prettification. Why is a reference document an acceptable trade off of accessibility and security concerns for prettier formatting but a personal email isn't?

They could have made this site plain text and followed all of their own guidelines, but they didn't. Instead, they wanted to make the site look prettier to get their message across with additional formatting plain text can't handle. They're reducing accessibility and increasing security issues just for their own superfluous desires.

[adolph]

Well, this reference document seems to work reasonably as plain text. What’s that person’s excuse for html just because it moves via HTTP?

https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc5322.txt

[tadfisher]

Plain text with 80-column line breaks suuuuucks on mobile. Give me HTML any day of the week.