HTML email (was Re: Vacuum and Reindex hangs

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.

Cheers,
   Steve