Mailing-List: contact cygwin-help AT cygwin DOT com; run by ezmlm List-Subscribe: List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: , Sender: cygwin-owner AT cygwin DOT com Mail-Followup-To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com Delivered-To: mailing list cygwin AT cygwin DOT com X-Authentication-Warning: slinky.cs.nyu.edu: pechtcha owned process doing -bs Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2003 23:05:53 -0400 (EDT) From: Igor Pechtchanski Reply-To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com To: Chalres grey wolf Banas cc: Randall R Schulz , Subject: Re: For The Record: HTML Email on the Internet; RFC 2557 In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Importance: Normal MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I swore to myself I wouldn't get involved here, but I've been known to break my promises (to myself) on occasion. Besides, I saw a comment I felt compelled to respond to (so I might as well express my views). Rant below... don't say you weren't warned! On Thu, 10 Apr 2003, Chalres grey wolf Banas wrote: > On Thu, 10 Apr 2003 17:04:25 -0700, Randall R Schulz > wrote: > [snip] > or what about people using palm pilots who can't read fancy emails? or the > system administrators who use Pine to remotely read their email because > they don't have the ability to use a remote client? Pine shows HTML mail just fine (except for image placeholders). Since the complaint was about formatting, rather than using images, I think the pine argument doesn't hold. FWIW, neither does the Palm one (mine renders HTML just fine). > you'd be jacking them all by sending HTML. parsing bad HTML that clients > like Outlook output is painful. Oh, and pine has a nice feature that lets you see HTML source... Just thought I'd mention that... > > By far most of the HTML mail is UCE. Some of that is grotesque (not for > > its message content, but for its presentation) but even the spam is > > mostly decent HTML. I'm more of a live-and-let-live person myself. I don't care if there's plenty of simple HTML mail around. I, personally, find HTML mail distasteful, perhaps because most of the HTML mail I receive *is* spam. However, I have nothing against, say, the or tags... Besides, I write HTML in vim, so what do I know, right?.. What I *am* annoyed with are multipart-mixed messages... They actually do *double* the content for no purpose other than accomodating text-only clients. If you want to send HTML mail, do it, but don't send *both* text and HTML. If you have a client that doesn't grok HTML, either get a better client, or install a procmail filter that parses HTML into text (easy enough)... or bounce the mail... or even show HTML as text. If the messages really only contain simple tags, like or (or
), they should be readable with the naked eye (as text), right?. > case in point. it's annoying. you've said so yourself, though not in so > many words. you have to configure your client to use the MS parser or else > it's a little buggy. that'd be enough to annoy me. Did I mention I had nothing against *simple* HTML mail? Well, the abovementioned ain't it. Things that are unreadable in the source shouldn't be sent. If you need 50 lines of JavaScript to convey your thoughts, I don't want to know them (except for the JavaScript code forums). > it's my choice and i stick by it. you're forcing your opinion on us. I don't think that saying "why not allow more than one format" is called "forcing opinion"... It's rather the other way around, IMO. To summarize: I think *simple* HTML is not a problem, but any mailing list moderator who defines what *simple* is will be branded a dictator, and there will be complaints aplenty. One solution is to grit your teeth an bear it. Another is to give in and allow a little more HTML, then a little more, until finally you get 800 line messages with 2 lines of actual content... And yet another solution is to ban HTML altogether, which is the simplest in the long run. Just my 2c. Igor -- http://cs.nyu.edu/~pechtcha/ |\ _,,,---,,_ pechtcha AT cs DOT nyu DOT edu ZZZzz /,`.-'`' -. ;-;;,_ igor AT watson DOT ibm DOT com |,4- ) )-,_. ,\ ( `'-' Igor Pechtchanski '---''(_/--' `-'\_) fL a.k.a JaguaR-R-R-r-r-r-.-.-. Meow! I may disagree with what you have to say, but I shall defend, to the death, your right to say it. -- Voltaire -- Unsubscribe info: http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple Bug reporting: http://cygwin.com/bugs.html Documentation: http://cygwin.com/docs.html FAQ: http://cygwin.com/faq/