[Mapserver-users] Re: List Question RFC

[Daniel Morissette]

Randy James wrote:
> 
> I seen some reference to html email but always ignored it,
> since it did not seem important to me ;-) Anyway i have a
> question: What are html emails i never seem to get anything
> like html headers or graphics in my email. But i use Yahoo
> and had my address for years, maybe i turned it off?
> 
> Or am i one of the ones you are ranting about :-)
> 

Apparently your emails are in plain text format, so no we were not 
ranting about you.  To tell if an email is in HTML format, do a "View 
Message Source".  If the message is plain text then you'll see the 
headers followed by the body of your message.  If the message is HTML 
then you'll usually see 2 copies of the message: opne in plaintext and 
one in HTML format.  Those who push their luck as far as including a 
background bitmap or one or more images in their signature will also 
carry a bunch of MIME attachments, turning a 3 lines message into a 20k 
or 30k message.

Here are a few reasons why I have found HTML emails annoying in the past:
- A 10 lines message that should be 1k or 2k in size in plain text is 
quickly bloated to 15-20k or more without adding anything useful (just a 
waste of bandwidth and disk space that add up over time)
- They often break mailing list archives and digests
- Some mail readers have problems with them: either displaying them or 
doing things like quoted replies sometimes won't work
- I won't comment on those that attach images to their signature or even 
worse: attach a background image to the message (fortunately very few 
people do that)

OTOH plain text emails are lightweight, are known to work anywhere and 
can be easily archived and searched.

OK, enough ranting... I don't want to enter into a war with anyone, I 
just wanted to highlight a few points for those who never realized the 
issues with HTML emails.

Daniel
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  Daniel Morissette               morissette at dmsolutions.ca
  DM Solutions Group              http://www.dmsolutions.ca/
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