Re: [tlug] [Was: Why Hollywood does break foreign films ?] Changing subject in thread.

[Scott Robbins <scottro@example.com>]

On Fri, Aug 16, 2013 at 01:25:16PM +0900, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
> Benjamin Tayehanpour writes:
> 
>  > I will of course bend to the wishes of the group. However, for
>  > peace of mind on my part, would you, just to indulge me, give me a
>  > rational reason not to?
> 
> 
>  > "(...) whether it can be handled or not" suggests that the fact
>  > that the MUA will present the text correctly regardless has no
>  > bearing on what people prefer.  It makes no sense:
> 
> Of course it does.  The HTML part (and GIF background, but I digress)
> bloat my spools and archives dramatically.

Don't forget---some people pay for bandwidth in quantity, therefore, the
person who sends an html mail is costing them money.  What a selfish thing
to do, especially if the recepient has no use for it.

I strongly believe that most people on this list prefer plain text.
Therefore, the one who feels they have to send in rich text or html is
equivalent to the ugly American who visits a Japanese house and refuses to
remove their shoes.  


>  > If a person who prefers plain text (with a client thus instructed)
>  > is presented with plain text, and a person who prefers enriched
>  > text (again, with a client thus instructed) receives enriched text,
>  > surely that leaves just one type of user unhappy, namely the one
>  > who couldn't be bothered to bend his or her client to his or her
>  > will?

See above.  The unhappy one is the one who can't be bothered to take off
their shoes.

> 
> It's not rational, but HTML smells like spam to me.  (I'm the proud
> (?) recipient of both an actual paper 419 scam letter and the original
> Green Card spam post to Usenet; that smell disgusts me.)  The first
> filter I imposed on a message body was for no-see-um HTML iframes,
> used by worms like Frethem.  95% of the (text parts of the) crap in my
> spambucket is HTML.

HTML makes it far easier to insert viruses and malware.  It lessens the
risk at no cost to anyone save for the person who wanted to put in italics
or colored text for an audience that will ignore it.

>  > So far, the only useful purpose I've seen with a plain-text-only
>  > policy is that it invariably gives tenured members a tangible pretext
>  > for grousing at those pesky newcomers with their wicked ways :)
> 

See the shoes analogy.  


-- 
Scott Robbins
PGP keyID EB3467D6
( 1B48 077D 66F6 9DB0 FDC2 A409 FA54 EB34 67D6 )
gpg --keyserver pgp.mit.edu --recv-keys EB3467D6