[postgis-users] HTML Mails

[Gino Lucrezi]

I would like to add some points to what strk wrote about HTML mails.

Please, please, DON'T send HTML emails.
If you really can't stop sending them, at least avoid sending them to mailing lists.

The HTML format was created for web pages. This is not a web page, it's an email. Use Ascii for emails!

Everyone can read Ascii.
Not everyone can read HTML.

HTML is very bad in digests.
HTML means your email will be unreadable on the mailing list archives.
HTML means your email will be unsearchable on the mailing list archives.
Badly formed HTML can crash some readers.
An HTML mail within a web-based mail system might render badly.

You might like to use HTML to specify 7 point, italic, watchamacallit-font.
The email recipient might like another font. He might - GASP - be unable to read it.

And of course I am assuming that you aren't using HTML for nefarious purposes such as spying on the reader (yes, you can do it.. for example most spammers do it, nowadays).

There are many more reasons to avoid HTML in mails.
See here, for example:
http://www.birdhouse.org/etc/evilmail.html

But in the case of this mailing list, the two most important reasons are
- to keep your message readable to digest subscribers
- to keep your message readable in the list archives

Hey, if you're posting, you want people to read your message.

Some mail programs (notably Outlook and Outlook Express) have a factory setting to send HTML by default.

Here you can find how to disable it in almost all mail clients:
http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Mail/nomime.html


Many mailing lists (including ones I manage for a personal project) strip all HTML or turn it into plain text.

The tool I use is http://scifi.squawk.com/demime.html

It also strips all attachments, which in most cases is good (in this list, however, it is good to be able to post test cases and patches as attachments)

I don't know if Refractions will want to use this or another software to filter the mailing list... but in the meanwhile, please, refrain from using HTML in mails

Gino Lucrezi