html mail

[Jim Parker]

I completely agree.  It should be on the shoulders of the person writing
to the mail list to conform to its rules/wishes.  But anytime you have a
requirement based on human intervention, it is going to get fouled up on
a regular basis.  There are plenty of filters that will take html email
and reform it to straight text.  Can't the mail list be configured with
that to fix mistakes made by the common Joe who doesn't know better?

Jim

-----Original Message-----
From: fedora-list-bounces at redhat.com
[mailto:fedora-list-bounces at redhat.com] On Behalf Of Scot L. Harris
Sent: Monday, November 08, 2004 1:14 PM
To: Fedora User List
Subject: Re: html mail

On Mon, 2004-11-08 at 14:01, Michael A. Peters wrote:
> On 11/08/2004 10:04:27 AM, A Fedora Core list member wrote:
> 
> > 
> > And don't post HTML messages to this list.
> 
> I've seen several cases on the various Fedora lists where a complaint
> is made about html messages that are actually sent as both text/plain
> and as html messages.
> 
> IE if the client reading the message can not display html, there is a
> text component as well.
> 
> Is it really necessary to ask people who send these types of messages
> to not do so?
> 
> I suspect what is happening is that evolution defaults to the html
> version because it can handle it, and people then assume that it was
> only sent as html mail. But often that isn't the case - often there is
> a text component and an html component.
> 
> I agree that a message should never be sent to a list in html only,
and
> I personally never send html mail myself, but is it really a crime to
> send a message that contains both text/plain and html to the list?
> 
> btw - I use balsa, which defaults to the text component message if  
> there is one.
> I bet evolution can be configured to do the same, is it? If not,
> perhaps it should be?

I don't think evolution is an issue here.  (I use that client and have
no problems reading any of the email sent to the list.)  I think there
are few clients out there that don't parse any of the mime type
information so a multi part message as you describe gets dumped out on
those clients has both a html chunk and a text chunk.  (guess on my part
but seems logical)  Not sure which clients do that (possibly pine?) but
I am sure some are that way.  Some users may not have a choice or have
chosen to use pure text setups.  

The other argument for not sending html even in multi part messages with
text parts included is that you are essentially sending two copies of
the message where only one is really needed.  This is the bandwidth
issue with html.  It increases the data that has to be received and some
users pay by the kilo byte over slow links.

So in that case it is really a courtesy to those users to send the
smallest message possible.
 
-- 
Scot L. Harris
webid at cfl.rr.com

The ends justify the means.
		-- after Matthew Prior 

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