pter

Plain Text Email Renderer — convert HTML email bodies into readable markdown.

Email HTML is a hostile environment: table-based layouts from 2004, tracking pixels, Outlook conditional comments, deeply nested reply chains with inconsistent quoting. pter converts all of it into clean, readable markdown.

Usage

let html = r#"<h1>Hello</h1><p>This is an <strong>email</strong>.</p>"#;
let markdown = pter::convert(html);
assert_eq!(markdown, "# Hello\n\nThis is an **email**.");

What it does

• Converts HTML elements to markdown equivalents (headings, links, lists, emphasis, code, images)
• Unwraps table-based email layouts (single-cell tables become content, multi-column linearizes)
• Detects and normalizes reply chains into > quoted markdown
• Strips tracking pixels, invisible elements, and Outlook conditional comments
• Produces output that is readable as plain text and renderable by any markdown toolchain

What it does not do

• Parse MIME email structure (use mailparse or mail-parser for that)
• Extract article content from marketing templates (compose with a separate extractor)
• Render markdown to a display format (use pulldown-cmark, comrak, etc.)

License

MIT