[postgis-users] HTML Mails

[Mark Fenbers]

Gino, you make good points! 

However, this is an e-mail list, not a Usenet Newsgroup bulletin board.  
This means that to participate in the requested fashion, one would need 
to turn off the HTML formatting for each individual message sent to this 
post (and leave it one for all the other e-mail we send throughout the 
day).  Do all mail clients have this capability and do all users know 
how to exploit this capability?  And would we remember to do it each 
time?  Some companies and gov't agencies encourage, if not require, HTML 
messages for their correspondence.  The advantage of a USENET Newsgroup 
is that the e-mail client can automatically prevent HTML for this 
account and allow it for normal e-mail correspondence.  Another 
significant advantage of newsgroup postings is that ISP's are less 
likely to get peaved over so many messages in customers' Inboxes.  (I 
just got a general "please, clean-up" message from my ISP this 
morning.)  And as much as I enjoy you folks (compared to other 
newsgroups with noticeably less manners), there are time spans when I'm 
not working with PostgreSQL/PostGIS projects and don't want to be forced 
to delete, read, or filter the messages.  For these reasons, I would 
like to see this group be moved to a USENET (or preferably, an RSS group).

Mark

Gino Lucrezi wrote:

>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
>
>_______________________________________________
>postgis-users mailing list
>postgis-users at postgis.refractions.net
>http://postgis.refractions.net/mailman/listinfo/postgis-users
>
>  
>
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