Plain text

Every message carries a plain-text part in Message.Text, beside the HTML. lttr builds it from the compiled template, module by module, with github.com/sulv-io/lttr/render/text. It never strips tags from the HTML, so the text part reads as if someone had written it by hand: actions are labelled, tables line up, and the chrome is reduced to what a text reader needs.

Read a text part

This is the text part of the Quiet order email, byte for byte from testdata/golden/:

CARIBHUBS

ORDER CH-20417

On its way.

Kareem picked up your order at 2:14 pm and will reach Frigate Bay by
5:30 pm.

Track delivery:
https://caribhubs.com/orders/CH-20417

Confirmed ✓ > Packed ✓ > [On its way] > Delivered

Mahogany serving board x1 ....... EC$185
Scotch bonnet pepper sauce x2 ... EC$56
Delivery, paid to your driver ... EC$15
Total ........................... EC$256
                                 ≈ US$95

DELIVER TO
Keisha Browne
12 Frigate Bay Road, St Kitts

DRIVER
Kareem J. · ★ 4.9
Grey Toyota Hiace

Payment is held until you confirm delivery. Questions? Reply to this
email or visit the Help Centre (https://caribhubs.com/help).

--
CaribHubs · Basseterre, St Kitts
Notification settings: https://caribhubs.com/preferences

It comes from this template: a statement with an eyebrow, a heading, a paragraph and a button; a progress; a receipt; a meta; and a buyer family F2 footer whose note the template overrides.

Follow the layout rules

• Blocks are separated by exactly one blank line, and the part ends with a newline.
• Lines wrap at 70 characters on spaces. A word longer than that, such as a URL, sits on its own line unbroken.
• The header is the brand name (Theme.Brand.Name) in capitals. An H2 family puts its banner in capitals on the line above; an H3 family puts its masthead in capitals on the line below.
• Eyebrows, table header rows, meta labels, story eyebrows and quote cites are written in capitals.
• Bold, italic and spans contribute their text only. Code spans contribute their value.

Write actions and links

• An action (a :button, a :link, a story or product link) is its label and a colon on one line and the full URL on the next. A trailing › on the label is dropped.
  01-order.out_for_delivery.txt

  Track delivery:
  https://caribhubs.com/orders/CH-20417
  

• A link in prose is written label (url), or just the URL when the label is empty or is the URL itself. An email autolink such as <ops@acme.example> is written as the bare address.
• Every URL is written in full, including merge values escaped as in the HTML (D34).

Line up tables with dot leaders

Two-column tables, breakdowns, receipts and stock lists use dot leaders:

Sales · 14 orders ............... EC$1,085.00
Commission · 6% ................. −EC$65.10
Reference ....................... PO-0923-114

• Values start in one column, at the longest label plus 5, clamped to columns 34–50; a label too long for that column still gets 3 dots, so its value starts further right.
• A row is label + " " + dots + " " + value.
• A sub-value, such as the ≈ US$ total of a receipt, sits on the next line, right-aligned to the end of the value.
• A receipt line's label is Name xQty, with no x0 when the quantity is zero (D30).
• A stock row is Name · SKU against N left or Out of stock.
• A two-column table with a header row writes the header in capitals, padded with spaces instead of dots, so it reads as column headings (D30).

Tables with any other number of columns become padded columns, 3 spaces apart, each as wide as its widest cell. Columns the GFM table aligns right stay right-aligned:

COMMISSION       NOW   FROM 1 NOV
Goods             6%           6%
Services          4%         3.5%
Delivery fee   EC$15        EC$15

Know each module's text form

Lists keep their markers: - item for bullets and 1. item for numbered lists, with a hanging indent when an item wraps (D30).

Close with the footer

The footer is the lead line, a blank line, then a block starting with --:

You're getting this because you subscribed to CaribHubs updates for St
Kitts & Nevis.

--
CaribHubs · Basseterre, St Kitts
Unsubscribe: https://caribhubs.com/unsubscribe
Preferences: https://caribhubs.com/preferences

• The lead is the F1 reason, F2 note, F3 opt-out line or F3·i internal line, after any footer.* override.
• Then --, the address line from the family's Address copy, and one Label: URL line per entry in the family's TextLinks. A link whose URL evaluates to empty is left out.
• The F1 nav row, the F1 Links and the F2 service line have no text form. That is why the URLs a reader needs go in TextLinks (see Families and streams).

Check the text part

The text part is checked like the HTML: a merge tag with no value, an empty action URL or an empty bound list is a render error in both parts (D31). URLs shown in both parts are checked by the HTML renderer, and text-only footer URLs are checked by Render with the same rules before either part is written (D30, D34).

The nine Quiet text parts are goldens in testdata/golden/*.txt, compared byte for byte by go test ./examples/quiet. See Goldens and testing.