Re: Open letter - HTML attachments

[David Jeske <jeske@...>]

On Mon, Nov 05, 2001 at 01:17:15PM -0800, Curt Carpenter wrote:
> I'm sorry you are annoyed with html mail. Perhaps surprisingly,
> those of us who use html do so not because we are not clever enough
> to configure our mail clients otherwise, but because we actually
> prefer it. As you are annoyed with html mail, so too am I annoyed
> with plain text messages. I wish everyone used html mail, but I'm
> not going to try to force it on anyone.

The real problem with HTML mail is that there is no standard for
quoted replies. Text-mail has been doing ">" quoted replies (like this
one) since before the Internet had it's name, and they work very well.
Discussions with some HTML participants end up in a jumble of HTML
"original message follows", HTML tables, and plain text replies. The
only thing I like about HTML mail is client-side paragraph formatting.

To make amends for my off-topic message, here are some useful snippits
for people:

- The "Mutt email client" (www.mutt.org) supports inline display of
HTML messages using an external filter (like lynx or links). It makes
reading (and replying to) HTML mail very simple, even for die hard
text-mode UNIX mailer people. You might be able to hook up a similar
setup for your favorite UNIX mail client. Email me if you would like
some help with this.

- If the listowners would like to enforce plain-text only discussion,
I'll happily provide a filter script for the mailing list which will
only pass text/plain or the text/plain portions of
multipart-alternative MIME messages. 

-- 
David Jeske (N9LCA) + http://www.chat.net/~jeske/ + jeske@chat.net