Re: HTML email (was Re: Vacuum and Reindex hangs

Steve Atkins wrote:
>
> On Jan 15, 2009, at 12:32 PM, Jason Long wrote:
>
>> I don't mean to be a pain either and I mean no disrespect to anyone
>> on this list in the following comments.
>>
>> However, this is about the most anal list ever.
>> I see so many emails on here about people complaining regarding the
>> proper way to reply or post to the list.
>>
>> I used larger font to point point out my statement from the code.  I
>> also did not realize it appeared that large to you.
>>
>> My res is 2560X1600 so it didn't look that large.
>>
>> I apologize.
>>
>> Just out of curiosity, why are you so apposed to HTML in a email?
>
> There are technical reasons. One of them is that most clients sending
> html mail are actually sending multipart/alternative mail with an html
> part and a plain text generate mechanically from the html part. People
> using plain text mail clients (and there tend to be a lot of them on
> technical
> lists) will see the plain text part only. That's fine for some sorts
> of email,
> but leads to tears when someone insists that they've hilighted the
> problem
> in red or bold or whatever, and half the recipients are reading the plain
> text version.
>
> Also, HTML mail tends to not use standard email quoting, meaning that
> it tends to discard context about who said what, which makes it very
> difficult to follow discussions. And it often plays hell with list
> digests and
> archives.
>
> There are also social reasons - it tends to be used by people who
> don't realize
> how it looks when received by the recipient, and who don't care. It's
> generally a
> sign of someone who has little experience of normal technical mailing
> list etiquette or
> polite online behaviour (such as following community norms).
>
> It also correlates strongly with people whose behaviour is antisocial
> in other
> respects (not so much use of html per-se as use of large font sizes,
> colours and suchlike, which are perceived by most recipients as SHOUTING,
> or vehement defense of html email).
>
> And it tends to derail threads into discussions like this, which is
> always
> bad.
>
> I'm sure none of that other than the last actually applies to you, but
> those are
> the expectations you set by using HTML email and then insulting all
> the list members when someone asks you to stop. That's not the way to get
> useful help from a technical peer support list.
Fair enough and I had no intention of insulting anyone.  Being anal is
not necessarily a bad thing. :)
>
> Cheers,
>   Steve
>