Davide Mirtillo
May 9, 2011 6:40 AM


There are loads of reasons why HTML messages are not good for mailing
lists. See [0] for some examples.
by the way, that page is from, like 2003. It talks about Compuserve 4. Netscape Communicator. (is that even still available?)  Regarding the scary language about html emails and attachments potentially carrying viruses, Trojans & worm -- nowadays it's at least just as likely, if not more likely, that you'll end up getting some malware on your computer just by simply visiting a web site. As for the risk involved in attachments, would you counsel everyone to never end or open attachments, then? If you would not warn against attachments, then why warn against html?

As for the issues with bandwidth and message size ... hey, read your mail via webmail and simply don't download to your computer, if your bandwidth is metered. As for message size, hell, my keyboard has a Delete key, how about yours?

Anyhow. Really. I was one of the loudest plain text email evangelists. In 2000 :-)
Ten years in the world of online communications is like a century in other modes of human interaction.
I have never looked back. I have saved countless precious hours in my lifespan by NOT having to use equal signs and dashes and create phony boxes and other ways of making a long plain text email bearable to read. Throw in a little bolding or a larger text size and that sure sets off a section subhead nicely. Sorry, but I will never see this as being a problem.

There's also an rfc about messaging
which i think would be pretty interesting for some of the members of
this mailing list [1].

Um. That's from 1995. Even the Wikipedia page on that RFC mentions that these community rules change in practice, are "in flux". And the page doesn't even mention formatted email (i don't think, just scanned quickly).

Simply saying "omg it's 2011, get an html e-mail client!1!!!!!" is not
an answer, because it's not a logic argument, and i could just reply on
the same line: "omg it's 2011, learn to configure your e-mail client
properly!".

My only point in my earlier message was, again, this is a losing battle. I also think it would be much nicer of folks *requested* plain text emails rather than instruct or demand folks to learn how to send them.

omg, it's not 1995 anymore, Either get an html capable email client or just delete everything that's not plain-text ... :-)

kazar